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LIFE 



GENE 



BY J4HC* QLfNCY ADAMS 




AFAYETTE. 



IS ADDED 






'V 



ABY * 



NAFIS, f^RNI^H & CO. 



1847. 





Entered according to an ActrtJj Cc 

the year 1847, bj£ 

NAFIS & CORlteH 1 

in the Clerk's Office of the Djfty t fgfert of 

the Southern District of Ne"w York. 



KwJ St. Cu'miiiglianrt. Printers, 
No. 9 Spruce Street. N T . Y. 



PREFACE. 

Among the eminent foreign gene- 
rals who served in the cause of 
American independence in the war 
of the revolution, Lafayette and Kos- 
ciusko are justly regarded as the 
most eminent. They are the heroes 
of two worlds, having laid claim to 
the lasting gratitude of their own com- 
patriots, as well as of the American 
people, by services and sacrifices of 
the noblest kind. Both of these emi- 
nent men enjoyed the esteem and 
confidence of our immortal Wash- 
ington in the highest degree, and 
both are considered by the American 
people as having earned their highest 
approbation and gratitude. 

The following memoirs of these 



. PREFACE. 



eminent men are founded on the best 
authorities, and may be regarded as 
strictly accurate with respect to facts 
and dates. Of the literary character 
of the memoir of Lafayette by Mr. 
Adams it is superfluous to speak. 

The editor commends these me- 
moirs to his countrymen with confi- 
dence. The perusal of such biogra- 
phies is one of the best means of 
preserving the national spirit, and 
awakening the emulation of the rising 
generation in virtue and patriotism. 



LIFE OF 
GENERAL LAFAYETTE. 



In order to form a just estimate 
of the life and character of Lafay- 
ette, it may be necessary to advert, 
not only to the circumstances con- 
nected with his birth, education, 
and lineage, but to the political 
condition of his country and of 
Great Britain, her national rival 
and adversary, at the time of his 
birth, and during his years of child- 
hood. 

On the sixth day of September, 
one thousand seven hundred and 
fifty-seven, the hereditary monarch 



LIFE OF 



of the British Islands was a native 
of Germany. A rude, illiterate old 
soldier of the wars for the Spanish 
succession; little versed even in 
the language of the nations over 
which he ruled; educated to the 
maxims and principles of the feudal 
law ; of openly licentious life, and 
of moral character far from credit- 
able : — he styled himself, by the 
grace of God, of Great Britain, 
France, and Ireland, king: but 
there was another and real King 
of France, no better, perhaps worse, 
than himself, and with whom he 
was then at war. This was Louis, 
the fifteenth of the name, great- 
grandson of his immediate prede- 
cessor, Louis the Fourteenth, some- 
times denominated the Great. 
These two kings held their thrones 



GENERAL LAFAYETTE. 7 

by the law of hereditary succession, 
variously modified, in France by 
the Roman Catholic, and in Britain 
by Protestant Reformed Chris- 
tianity. 

They were at war — chiefly for 
conflicting claims to the possession 
of the western wilderness of North 
America — a prize, the capabilities 
of which are now unfolding them- 
selves with a grandeur and magni- 
ficence unexampled in the history 
of the world ; but of which, if the 
nominal possession had remained 
in either of. the two princes, who 
were staking their kingdoms upon 
the issue of the strife, the buffalo 
and the beaver, with their hunter, 
the Indian savage, would, at this 
day, have been, as they then were, 
the only inhabitants.- 



8 LIFE OF 

In this war, George Washington, 
then at the age of twenty-four, was 
on the side of the British German 
king, a youthful, but heroic com- 
batant ; and, in the same war, the 
father of Lafayette was on the 
opposite side, exposing his life in 
the heart of Germany, for the 
cause of the King of France. 

On that day, the sixth of Sep- 
tember, one thousand seven hun- 
dred and fifty-seven, was born 
Gilbert Mottier. De Lafay- 
ette, at the castle of Chavaniac, 
in Auvergne, and a few months 
after his birth, his father fell in 
battle at Minden. 

Let us here observe the influence 
of political institutions over the 
destinies and the characters of 
men. George the Second was a 



GENERAL LAFAYETTE. i) 

German prince ; he had been made 
King of the British Islands by the 
accident of his birth : that is to 
say, because his great-grandmother 
had been the daughter of James 
the First; that great-grandmother 
had been married to the King of 
Bohemia, and her youngest daughter 
had been married to the Elector of 
Hanover. George the Second's 
father was her son, and, when 
James the Second had been ex- 
pelled from his throne and his 
country by the indignation of his 
people, revolted against his tyran- 
ny, and when his two daughters, 
who succeeded him, had died with- 
out issue, George the First, the 
son of the Electress of Hanover, 
became King of Great Britain, by 
the settlement of an act of parlia- 



10 



ment, blending together the princi- 
ple of hereditary succession with 
that of Reformed Protestant Chris- 
tianity, and the rites of the Church 
of England. 

The throne of France was occu- 
pied by virtue of the same principle 
of hereditary succession, differently 
modified, and blended with the 
Christianity of the Church of Rome. 
From this line of succession all 
females were inflexibly excluded. 
Louis the Fifteenth, at the age of 
six years, had become the absojbte 
sovereign of France, because He' 
was the great-grandson of his im- 
mediate predecessor. He was of 
the third generation in descent 
from the preceding king, and, by 
the law of primogeniture ingrafted 
upon that of lineal succession, did, 



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GENERAL LAFAYETTE. 11 



by the death of his ancestor, forth- 
with succeed, though in childhood, 
to an absolute throne, in preference 
to numerous descendants from that 
same ancestor, then in full vigour 
of manhood. 

The first reflection that must re- 
cur to a rational being, in contem- 
plating these two results of the 
principle of hereditary succession, 
as resorted to for designating the 
rulers of nations, is, that two per- 
sons more unfit to occupy the 
thrones of Britain and of France, 
at the time of their respective ac- 
cessions, could scarcely have been 
found upon the face of the globe — 
George the Second, a foreigner, 
the son and grandson of foreigners, 
born beyond the seas, educated in 
uncongenial manners, ignorant of 






12 LIFE OF 

the constitution, of the laws, even 
of the language of the people over 
whom he was to rule ; and Louis 
the Fifteenth, an infant, incapable 
of discerning his right hand from 
his left. Yet, strange as it may- 
sound to the ear of unsophisticated 
reason, the British nation were 
wedded to the belief that this act of 
settlement, fixing their crown upon 
the heads of this succession of total 
strangers, was the brightest and 
most glorious exemplification of 
their national freedom ; and not 
less strange, if aught in the imper- 
fection of human reason could 
seem strange, was that deep con- 
viction of the French people, at the 
same period, that their chief glory 
and happiness consisted in the ve- 
hemence of their affection for their 



g 

GENERAL LAFAYETTE. 13 

king, because he was descended in 
an unbroken male line of genealo- 
gy from St. Louis. 

One of the fruits of this line of 
hereditary succession, modified by 
sectarian principles of religion, was 
to make the peace and war, the 
happiness or misery of the people 
of the British empire, dependent 
upon the fortunes of the Electorate 
of Planover — the personal domain 
of their imported king. This was 
a result calamitous alike to the 
people of Hanover, of Britain, and 
of France ; for it was one of the 
two causes of that dreadful war 
then waging between them ; and 
as the cause, so was this a princi- 
pal theatre of that disastrous war. 
It was at Minden, in the heart of 



14 LIFE OF 

father of Lafayette fell, and left him 
an orphan, a victim to that war, and 
to the principle of hereditary suc- 
cession from which it emanated. 

Thus, then, it was on the 6th of 
September, 1757, the day when 
Lafayette was born. The kings 
of France and Great Britain were 
seated upon their thrones by virtue 
of the principle of hereditary suc- 
cession, variously modified and 
blended with different forms of 
religious faith, and they were 
waging war against each other, 
and exhausting the blood and trea- 
sure of their people, for causes in 
which neither of the nations had 
any beneficial or lawful interest. 

In this war the father of Lafay- 
ette fell in the cause of his king, 
but not of his country. He was an 



GENERAL LAFAYETTE. 15 

officer of an invading army, the 
instrument of his sovereign's wan- 
ton ambition and lust of conquest. 
The people of the Electorate of 
Hanover had done no wrong to 
him or to his country. When his 
son came to an age capable of un- 
derstanding the irreparable loss 
that he had suffered, and to reflect 
upon the causes of his father's fate, 
there was no drop of consolation 
mingled in the cup, from the con- 
sideration that he had died for his 
country. And when the youthful 
mind was awakened to meditation 
upon the rights of mankind, the 
principles of freedom, and theories 
of government, it cannot be difficult 
to perceive, in the illustrations of 
his own family records, the source 
of that aversion to hereditary rule, 



16 LIFE OF 

perhaps the most distinguishing 
feature of his political opinions, 
and to which he adhered through 
all the vicissitudes of his life. 

In the same war, and at the 
same time, George Washington 
was armed, a loyal subject, in 
support of his king; but to him 
that was also the cause of his 
country. His commission was not 
in the army of George the Second, 
but issued under the authority of 
the colony of Virginia, the province 
in which he received his birth. 
On the borders of that province, 
the war in its most horrid forms 
was waged — not a war of mercy 
and of courtesy, • like that of the 
civilized embattled legions of Eu- 
rope, but war to the knife — the 
war of Indian savages, terrible to 



GENERAL LAFAYETTE. lH 

man, but more terrible to the ten- 
der sex, and most terrible to help- 
less infancy. In defence of his 
country against the ravages of 
such a war, Washington, in the 
dawn of manhood, had drawn his 
sword, as if Providence, with de* 
liberate purpose, had sanctified for 
him the practice of war, all-detest* 
able and unhallowed as it is, that 
he might, in a cause virtuous and 
exalted by its motive and its end, 
be trained and fitted in a congenial 
school to march in after times the 
leader of heroes in the war of his 
country's independence. 

At the time of the birth of La- 
fayette, this War, which was to 
make him a fatherless child, and 
in which Washington was laying 
broad and deep, in the defence and 



18 LIFE OF 

protection of his native land, the 
foundations of his unrivalled re- 
nown, was but in its early stage. 
It was to continue five years long- 
er, and was to close with the total 
extinguishment of the colonial do- 
minion of France on the continent 
of North America. The deep hu- 
miliation of France, and the tri- 
umphant ascendency on this conti- 
nent of her rival, were the first re- 
sults of this great national conflict. 
The complete expulsion of France 
from North America seemed, to 
the superficial vision of men, to fix 
the British power over these ex- 
tensive regions on foundations im- 
moveable as the everlasting hills. 

Let us pass in imagination a pe- 
riod of only twenty years, and 
alight upon the borders of the river 



GENERAL LAFAYETTE. 19 



Brandy wine. Washington is com- 
mander-in-chief of the armies of 
the United States of America — war 
is again raging m the heart of his 
native land — hostile armies of one 
and the same name, blood, and 
language, are arrayed for battle on 
the banks of the stream ; and Phi- 
ladelphia, where the United States 
are in Congress assembled, and 
whence their decree of independ- 
ence has gone forth, is the destined 
prize to the conflict of the day. 
Who is that tall, slender youth, of 
foreign air and aspect, scarcely 
emerged from the years of boy- 
hood, and fresh from the walls of 
a college ; fighting, a volunteer, at 
the side of Washington, bleeding, 
unconsciously to himself, and ral- 
lying his men to secure the retreat 



20 LIFE OF 



of the scattered American ranks ? 
It is Gilbert Mottier de La- 
fayette — the son of the victim of 
Minden ; and he is bleeding in the 
cause of North American inde- 
pendence, and of freedom. 

We pause one moment to in- 
quire what was this cause of North 
American independence, and what 
were the motives and inducements 
to the youthful stranger to devote 
himself, his life, and fortune, to it. 

The people of the British colo- 
nies in North America, after a con- 
troversy of ten years' duration with 
their sovereign beyond the seas, 
upon an attempt by him and his 
parliament to tax them without 
their consent, had been constrained 
by necessity to declare themselves 
independent — to dissolve the tie of 















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GENERAL LAFAYETTE. 23 

their allegiance to him — to re- 
nounce their right to his protection, 
and to assume their station among 
the independent civilized nations of 
the earth. This had been done 
with a deliberation and solemnity 
unexampled in the history of the 
world — done in the midst of a civil 
war, differing in character from 
any of those which for centuries 
before had desolated Europe. The 
war had arisen upon a question 
between the rights of the people 
and the powers of their govern- 
ment. The discussion, in the pro- 
gress of the controversy, had open- 
ed to the contemplations of men, 
the first foundations of civil society 
and of government. The war of 
independence began by litigation 
upon a petty stamp on paper, and 



24 LIFE OF 

a tax of three pence a pound upon 
tea ; but these broke up the foun- 
tains of the great deep, and the de- 
luge ensued. Had the British Par- 
liament the right to tax the people 
of the colonies in another hemi- 
sphere, not represented in the impe- 
rial legislature 1 They affirmed 
they had : the people of the colo- 
nies insisted they had not. There 
were ten years of pleading before 
they came to an issue ; and all the 
legitimate sources of power, and all 
the primitive elements of freedom, 
were scrutinized, debated, ana- 
lyzed, and elucidated, before the 
lightning of the torch of Ate, and 
her cry of havoc upon letting slip 
the dogs of war. 

When the day of conflict came, 
the issue of the contest was neces- 



GENERAL LAFAYETTE. 25 

sarily changed. The people of the 
colonies had maintained the contest 
on the principle of resisting the in- 
vasion of chartered rights — first by 
argument and remonstrance, and 
finally by appeal to the sword. 
But with the war came the neces- 
sary exercise of sovereign powers. 
The Declaration of Independence 
justified itself as the only possible 
remedy for insufferable wrongs. 
It seated itself upon the first foun- 
dations of the law of nature, and 
the incontestable doctrine of human 
rights. There was no longer any 
question of the constitutional pow- 
ers of the British Parliament, or of 
violated colonial charters. Thence- 
forward the American nation sup- 
ported its existence by war ; and 
the British nation, by war, was 



26 LIFE OF 

contending for conquest. As, be- 
tween the two parties, the single 
question at issue was Independence 
— but in the confederate existence 
of the North American Union 
Liberty — not only their own li- 
berty, but the vital principle of 
liberty to the whole race of civilized 
man, was involved. 

It was at this stage of the con- 
flict, and immediately after the 
Declaration of Independence, that 
it drew the attention, and called 
into action the moral sensibilities 
and the intellectual faculties of La- 
fayette, then in his nineteenth year. 

The war was revolutionary. It 
began by the dissolution of the 
British government in the colonies ; 
the people of which were, by that 
operation, left without any govern- 



GENERAL LAFAYETTE. 27 

ment whatever. They were then 
at one and the same time main- 
taining their independent national 
existence by war, and forming new 
social compacts for their own go- 
vernment thenceforward. The 
construction of civil society ; the 
extent and the limitations of organ- 
ized power ; the establishment of a 
system of government combining 
the greatest enlargement of indi- 
vidual liberty with the most perfect 
preservation of public order, were 
the continual occupations of every 
mind. The consequences of this 
state of things to the history of 
mankind, and especially of Europe, 
were foreseen by none. Europe 
saw nothing but the war ; a people 
struggling for liberty, and against 
oppression ; and the people in every 



28 LIFE OF 

part of Europe sympathized with 
the people of the American colonies. 
With their governments it was 
not so. The people of the American 
colonies were insurgents ; all go- 
vernments abhor insurrection ; they 
were revolted colonists. The great 
maritime powers of Europe had 
colonies of their own, to which the 
example of resistance against op- 
pression might be contagious. The 
American colonies were stigma- 
tized in all the official acts of the 
British government as rebels ; and 
rebellion to the governing part of 
mankind is as the sin of witchcraft. 
The governments of Europe, there- 
fore, were, at heart, on the side of 
the British government in this war, 
and the people of Europe were on 
the side of the American people. 



GENERAL LAFAYETTE. 



Lafayette, by his position and 
condition in life, was one of those 
who, governed by the ordinary 
impulses which influence and con- 
trol the conduct of men, would 
have sided in sentiment with the 
British or Royal cause. 

Lafayette was born a subject of 
the most absolute and most splen- 
did monarchy of Europe, and in 
the highest rank of her proud and 
chivalrous nobility. He had been 
educated at a college of the Uni- 
versity of Paris, founded by the 
royal munificence of Louis the 
Fourteenth, or of his minister, 
Cardinal Richelieu. Left an or- 
phan in early childhood, with the 
inheritance of a princely fortune, 
he had been married, at sixteen 
years of age, to a daughter of the 



30 LIFE OF 



house of Noailles, the most distin- 
guished family of the kingdom, 
scarcely deemed in public consider- 
ation inferior to that which wore 
the crown. He came into active 
life, at the change from boy to 
man, a husband and a father, in 
the full enjoyment of everything 
that avarice could covet, with a 
certain prospect before him of all 
that ambition could crave. Happy 
in his domestic affections, incapa- 
ble, from the benignity of his na- 
ture, of envy, hatred, or revenge, 
a life of " ignoble ease and indolent 
repose" seemed to be that which 
nature and fortune had combined 
to prepare before him. To men 
of ordinary mould this condition 
would have led to a life of luxu- 
rious apathy and sensual indul- 



GENERAL LAFAYETTE. 31 

gence. Such was the life into 
which, from the operation of the 
same causes, Louis the Fifteenth 
had sunk, with his household and 
court, while Lafayette was rising 
to manhood, surrounded by the 
contamination of their example* 
Had his natural endowments been 
even of the higher and nobler or- 
der of such as adhere to virtue, 
even in the lap of prosperity, and 
in the bosom of temptation, he 
might have lived and died a pattern 
of the nobility of France, to be class- 
ed, in after times, with the Turennes 
and the Montausiers of the age of 
Louis the Fourteenth, or with the 
Villars or the Lamoignons of the 
age immediately preceding his own. 
But as, in the firmament of hea- 
ven that rolls over our heads, there 



32 LIFE OF 

is, among the stars of the first mag- 
nitude, one so pre-eminent in splen- 
dour, as, in the opinion of astrono- 
mers, to constitute a class by itself, 
so, in the fourteen hundred years 
of the French monarchy, among 
the multitudes of great and mighty 
men which it has evolved, the name 
of Lafayette stands unrivalled in 
the solitude of glory. 

In entering upon the threshold 
of life, a career was to open before 
him. He had the option of the 
court and the camp. An office 
was tendered to him in the house- 
hold of the king's brother, the 
Count de Provence, since success- 
ively a royal exile and a reinstated 
king. The servitude and inaction 
of a court had no charms for him ; 
he preferred a commission in the 



GENERAL LAFAYETTE. 33 



army ; and, at the time of the De- 
claration of Independence, was a 
captain of dragoons in garrison at 
Metz. 

There, at an entertainment given 
by his relative, the Marechal de 
Broglie, the commandant of the 
place, to the Duke of Gloucester, 
brother to the British king, and 
then a transient traveller through 
that part of France, he learns, as 
an incident of intelligence received 
that morning by the English prince 
from London, that the Congress of 
Rebels, at Philadelphia, had issued 
a Declaration of Independence. A 
conversation ensues upon the causes 
which have contributed to produce 
this event, and upon the conse- 
quences which may be expected to 
flow from it. The imagination of 



34 LIFE OF 



Lafayette has caught across the At» 
lantic tide the spark emitted from 
the Declaration of Independence s 
his heart has kindled at the shock, 
and, before he slumbers upon his 
pillow, he has resolved to devote 
his life and fortune to the cause. 

You have before you the cause 
and the man. The self-devotion of 
Lafayette was twofold. First, to 
the people, maintaining a bold and 
seemingly desperate struggle against 
oppression, and for national exist* 
ence. Secondly, and chiefly, to 
the principles of their declaration, 
which then first unfurled before his 
eyes the consecrated standard of 
human rights. To that standard, 
without an instant of hesitation, he 
repaired. Where it would lead 
him, it is scarcely probable that he 



GENERAL LAFAYETTE. 35 

himself then foresaw. It was then 
identical with the stars and stripes 
of the American Union, floating to 
the breeze from the Hall of Inde- 
pendence, at Philadelphia. Nor 
sordid avarice, nor vulgar ambition, 
could point . his footsteps to the 
pathway leading to that banner. 
To the love of ease or pleasure 
nothing could be more repulsive. 
Something may be allowed to the 
beatings of the youthful breast, 
which make ambition virtue, and 
something to the spirit of military 
adventure, imbibed from his pro- 
fession, and which he felt in com- 
mon with many others. France, 
Germany, Poland, furnished to the 
armies of this union, in our revo- 
h\ onary struggle, no inconsi lora- 
bie number of officers of hi«h rank 



36 LIFE OF 

and distinguished merit. The names 
of Pulaski and De Kalb are num- 
bered among the martyrs of our 
freedom, and their ashes repose in 
our soil side by side with the ca- 
nonized bones of Warren and of 
Montgomery. To the virtues of 
Lafayette, a more protracted career 
and happier earthly destinies were 
reserved. To the moral principle 
of political action, the sacrifices of 
no other man were comparable to 
his. Youth, health, fortune ; the 
favour of his king ; the enjoyment 
of ease and pleasure ; even the 
choicest blessings of domestic feli- 
city — he gave them all for toil and 
danger in a distant land, and an al- 
most hopeless cause ; but it was 
the cause of justice, and of the 
rights of human kind. 



GENERAL LAFAYETTE. 37 

The resolve is firmly fixed, and 
it now remains to be carried into 
execution. On the 7th of Decem- 
ber, 1776, Silas Deane, then a se- 
cret agent of the American Con- 
gress at Paris, stipulates with the 
Marquis de Lafayette that he shall 
receive a commission, to date from 
that day, of major-general in the 
army of the United States ; and the 
marquis stipulates, in return, to de- 
part when and how Mr. Deane 
shall judge proper, to serve the 
United States with all possible zeal, 
without pay or emolument, reserv- 
ing to himself only the liberty of 
returning to Europe, if his family 
or his king should recall him. 

Neither his family nor his king 
were willing that he should depart; 
nor had Mr. Deane the power, ei- 



38 LIFE OF 



ther to conclude this contract, or to 
furnish the means of his convey- 
ance to America. Difficulties rise 
up before him only to be dispersed, 
and obstacles thicken only to be 
surmounted. The day after the 
signature of the contract, Mr. 
Deane's agency was superseded by 
the arrival of Doctor Benjamin 
Franklin and Arthur Lee, as his 
colleagues in commission ; nor did 
they think themselves authorized 
to confirm his engagement. La- 
fayette is not to be discouraged. 
The commissioners extenuate no- 
thing of the unpromising condition 
of their cause. Mr. Deane avows 
his inability to furnish him with a 
passage to the United States. " The 
more desperate the cause," says 
Lafayette, " the greater need has 



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GENERAL LAFAYETTE. 41 

it of my services; and, if Mr. 
Deane has no vessel for my pas- 
sage, I shall purchase one myself, 
and will traverse the ocean with a 
selected company of my own." 

Other impediments arise. His 
design becomes known to the Bri- 
tish ambassador at the court of 
Versailles, who remonstrates to the 
French government against it. At 
his instance, orders are issued for 
the detention of the vessel pur- 
chased by the marquis, and fitted 
out at Bordeaux, and for the arrest 
of his person. To elude the first 
of these orders, the vessel is re- 
moved from Bordeaux to the neigh- 
bouring port of passage, within the 
dominion of Spain. The order for 
his own arrest is executed ; but, by 
stratagem and disguise, he escapes 



42 LIFE OF 

from the custody of those who have 
him in charge, and, before a second 
order can reach him, he is safe on 
the ocean wave, bound to the land 
of independence and of freedom. 

It had been necessary to clear 
out the vessel for an island of the 
West Indies ; but, once at sea, he 
avails himself of his right as owner 
of the ship, .and cornels his cap- 
tain to steer for the shores of eman- 
cipated North America. He lands, 
with his companions, on the 25th 
of April, 1777, in South Carolina, 
not far from Charleston, and finds 
a most cordial reception and hos- 
pitable welcome in the house of 
Major Huger. 

Every detail of this adventurous 
expedition, full of incidents, com- 
bining with the simplicity of his- 



GENERAL LAFAYETTE. 45 

toricai truth all the interest of 
romance, is so well known, and so 
familiar to the memory of all, that 
I pass them over without further 
notice. 

From Charleston he proceeded 
to Philadelphia, where the Congress 
of the Revolution were in session, 
and where he offered his services 
in the cause. Here, again, he was 
met with difficulties, which, to men 
of ordinary minds, would have been 
insurmountable. Mr. Deane's con- 
tracts were so numerous, and for 
offices of rank so high, that it was 
impossible they should be ratified 
by the Congress. He had stipu- 
lated for the appointment of other 
major-generals ; and, in the same 
contract with that of Lafayette, for 
eleven other officers, from the rank 



46 LIFE OF 

of colonel to that of lieutenant. To 
introduce these officers, strangers, 
scarcely one of whom could speak 
the language of the country, into 
the American army, to take rank 
and precedence over the native 
citizens whose ardent patriotism 
had pointed them to the standard 
of their country, could not, without 
great injustice, nor without exciting 
the most fatal dissensions, have 
been done ; and this answer was 
necessarily given as well to Lafay- 
ette as to the other officers who 
had accompanied him from Europe. 
His reply was an offer to serve as 
a volunteer, and without pay. 
Magnanimity, thus disinterested, 
could not be resisted, nor could 
the sense of it be worthily mani- 
fested by a mere acceptance of the 



GENERAL LAFAYETTE. 47 

offer. On the 31st of July, 1777, 
therefore, the following resolution 
and preamble are recorded upon 
the journals of Congress : 

" Whereas, the Marquis de La- 
fayette, out of his great zeal to the 
cause of liberty, in which the 
United States are engaged, has left 
his family and connexions, and, at 
his own expense, come over to 
offer his service to the United 
Stales, without pension, or particu- 
lar allowance, and is anxious to 
risk his life in our cause : 

" Resolved, That his service be 
accepted, and that, in consideration 
of his zeal, illustrious family, and 
connexions, he have the rank and 
commission of major-general in the 
army of the United States." 

He had the rank and commis- 



48 LIFE OF 

sion, but no command as a major- 
general. With this, all personal 
ambition was gratified ; and what- 
ever services he might perform, he 
could attain no higher rank in the 
American army. The discontents 
of officers already in the service, 
at being superseded in command 
by a stripling foreigner, were dis- 
armed; nor was the prudence of 
Congress, perhaps without its influ- 
ence in withholding a command, 
which, but for a judgment prema- 
ture " beyond the slow advance of 
years," might have hazarded some- 
thing of the sacred cause itself, by 
confidence too hastily bestowed. 

The day after the date of his 
commission, he was introduced to 
Washington, commander-in-chief 
of the armies of the confederation. 



GENERAL LAFAYETTE. 49 

It was the the critical period of the 
campaign of 1777. The British 
army, commanded by Lord Howe, 
was advancing from the head of 
Elk, to which they had been trans- 
ported by sea from New York, 
upon Philadelphia. Washington, 
by a counteracting movement, had 
been approaching from his line of 
defence, in the Jerseys, towards the 
city, and arrived there on the 1st 
of August. It was a meeting of 
congenial souls. At the close of 
it, Washington gave the youthful 
stranger an invitation to make the 
head-quarters of the commander-in- 
chief his home : that he should es- 
tablish himself there at his own 
time, and consider himself at all 
times as one of his own family. It 
was natural that, in giving this in- 



50 LIFE OF 

vitation, he should remark the con- 
trast of the situation in which it 
would place him with that of ease, 
and comfort, and luxurious enjoy- 
ment, which he had left, at the 
splendid court of Louis the Six- 
teenth, and of his beautiful and ac- 
complished, but ill-fated queen, 
then at the very summit of all 
which constitutes the common esti- 
mate of felicity. How deep and 
solemn was this contrast ! No na- 
tive American had undergone the 
trial of the same alternative. None 
of them, save Lafayette, had 
brought the same tribute of his life, 
his fortune, and his honour, to a 
cause of a country foreign to his 
own. To Lafayette the soil of 
freedom was his country. His 
post of honour was the post of 



GENERAL LAFAYETTE. 51 



danger. His fire-side was the 
field of battle. He accepted with 
joy the invitation of Washington, 
and repaired forthwith to the camp. 
The bond of indissoluble friendship 
— the friendship of heroes, was 
sealed from the first hour of their 
meeting, to last through their lives, 
and to live in the memory of man- 
kind for ever. 

It was, perhaps, at the sugges- 
tion of the American commission- 
ers in France, that this invitation 
was given by Washington. In a 
letter from them, of the 25th of 
May, 1777, to the committee of 
foreign affairs, they announce that 
the marquis had departed for the 
United States in a ship of his own, 
accompanied by some officers of 
distinction, in order to serve in 



52 LIFE OF 



our armies. They observe that he 
is exceedingly beloved, and that 
everybody's good wishes attend 
him. They cannot but hope that 
he will meet with such a reception 
as will make the country and his 
expedition agreeable to him. They 
further say that those who censure 
it as imprudent in him, do never- 
theless applaud his spirit ; and they 
are satisfied that civilities and re- 
spect shown to him will be ser- 
viceable to our cause in France, as 
pleasing not only to his powerful 
relations and to the court, but to 
the whole French nation. They 
finally add, that he had left a beau- 
tiful young wife, and for her sake, 
particularly, they hoped that his 
bravery and ardent desire to dis- 
tinguish himself would be a little 



GENERAL LAFAYETTE. 53 

restrained by the general's (Wash- 
ington's) prudence, so as not to 
permit his being hazarded much, 
but upon some important occasion. 
The head-quarters of Washing- 
ton, serving as a volunteer, with 
the rank and commission of a ma- 
jor-general without command, was 
precisely the station adapted to the 
developement of his character, to 
his own honour, and that of the 
army, and to the prudent manage- 
ment of the country's cause. To 
him it was at once a severe school 
of experience, and a rigorous test 
of merit. But it was not the place 
to restrain him from exposure to 
danger. The time at which he 
joined the camp was one of pre- 
eminent peril. The British govern- 
ment, and the commander-in-chief 



1 

54 LIFE OF 

of the British forces, had imagined 
that the possession of Philadelphia, 
combined with that of the line along 
the Hudson river, from the Cana- 
dian frontier to the city of New 
York, would be fatal to the Ameri- 
can cause. By the capture of Bur- 
go yne and his army, that portion 
of the project sustained a total de- 
feat. The final issue of the war 
was indeed sealed, with the capitu- 
lation of the 17th of October, 1777, 
at Saratoga — sealed, not with the 
subjugation, but with the inde- 
pendence of the North American 
Union. 

In the southern campaign the 
British commander was more suc- 
cessful. The fall of Philadelphia 
was the result of the battle of 
Brandy wine, on the 11th of Sep- 



GENERAL LAFAYETTE. 55 

tember. This was the first action 
in which Lafayette was engaged, 
and the first lesson of his practical 
military school was a lesson of 
misfortune. In the attempt to rally 
the American troops in their re- 
treat, he received a musket-ball in 
the leg. He was scarcely con- 
scious of the wound till made sensi- 
ble of it by the loss of blood, and 
even then ceased not his exertions 
in the field till he had secured and 
covered the retreat. 

This casualty confined him for 
some time to his bed at Philadel- 
phia, and afterwards detained him 
some days at Bethlehem ; but 
within six weeks he rejoined the 
head-quarters of Washington, near 
Whitemarsh. He soon became 
anxious to obtain a command equal 



56 LIFE OF 



to his rank, and in the short space 
of time that he had been with the 
commander-in-chief, had so tho- 
roughly obtained his confidence as 
to secure an earnest solicitation 
from him to Congress, in his fa- 
vour. In a letter to Congress of 
the 1st of November, 1777, he says, 
" The Marquis de Lafayette is ex- 
tremely solicitous of having a com- 
mand equal to his rank. I do not 
know in what light Congress will 
view the matter ; but it appears to 
me, from a consideration of his 
illustrious and important connex- 
ions, the attachment which he has 
manifested for our cause, and the 
consequences which his return in 
disgust might produce, that it will 
be advisable to gratify him in his 
wishes ; and the more so, as seve- 



GENERAL LAFAYETTE. 57 

ral gentlemen from France, who 
came over under some assurances, 
have gone back disappointed in 
their expectations. His . conduct 
with respect to them, stands in a 
favourable point of view; having 
interested himself to remove their 
uneasiness, and urged the impro- 
priety of their making any unfa- 
vourable representations upon their 
arrival at home; and in all his 
letters he has placed our affairs in 
the best situation he could. Be- 
sides, he is sensible ; discreet in his 
manners ; has made great profi- 
ciency in our language ; and, from 
the disposition he discovered at the 
battle of Brandy wine, possesses a 
large share of bravery and military 
ardour." 

Perhaps one of the highest en- 



58 LIFE OF 



comiums ever pronounced of a man 
in public life, is that of an histo- 
rian eminent for his profound ac- 
quaintance with mankind, who, in 
painting a great character by a 
single line, says that he was just 
equal to all the duties of the high- 
est offices which he attained, and 
never above them. There are in 
some men qualities which dazzle 
and consume, to little or no valuable 
purpose. They seldom belong to 
the great benefactors of mankind. 
They were not the qualities of 
Washington or Lafayette. The 
testimonial offered by the Ameri- 
can commander to his young 
friend, after a probation of several 
months, and after the severe test of 
the disastrous day of Brandywine, 
was precisely adapted to the man 



GENERAL LAFAYETTE. 59 

in whose favour it was given, and 
to the object which it. was to ac- 
complish. What earnestness of 
purpose ! what sincerity of convic- 
tion ! what energetic simplicity of 
expression ! what thorough deline- 
ation of character ! The merits 
of Lafayette, to the eye of Wash- 
ington, are the candour and gene- 
rosity of his disposition — the inde- 
fatigable industry of application, 
which, in the course of a few 
months, has already given him the 
mastery of a foreign language — 
good sense — discretion of manners, 
an attribute not only unusual in 
early years, but doubly rare in 
alliance with that enthusiasm so 
signally marked by his self-devo- 
tion to the American cause ; and, 
to crown all the rest, the bravery 



60 LIFE OF 

and military ardour so brilliantly 
manifested at the Brandy wine. 
Here is no random praise ; no 
unmeaning panegyric. The clus- 
ter of qualities, all plain and sim- 
ple, but so seldom found in union 
together, so generally incompatible 
with one another, these are the 
properties eminently trustworthy, 
in the judgment of Washington ; 
and these are the properties which 
his discernment has found in La- 
fayette, and which urge him thus 
earnestly to advise the gratification 
of his wish by the assignment of a 
command equal to the rank which 
had been granted to his zeal and 
his illustrious name. 

The recommendation of Wash- 
ington had its immediate effect; 
and on the 1st of December, 1777, 



GENERAL LAFAYETTE. 61 

it was resolved by Congress, that 
he should be informed it was high- 
ly agreeable to Congress, that the 
Marquis de Lafayette should be 
appointed to the command of a 
division in the continental army. 

He received, accordingly, such 
an appointment ; and a plan was 
organized in Congress for a second 
invasion of Canada, at the head of 
which he was placed. This expe- 
dition, originally projected without 
consultation with the commander- 
in-chief, might be connected with 
the temporary dissatisfaction, in 
the community and in Congress, at 
the ill-success of his endeavours to 
defend Philadelphia, which rival 
and unfriendly partisans were too 
ready to compare with the splendid 
termination, by the capture of Bur- 



62 LIFE OF 



goyne and his army, of the north- 
ern campaign, under the command 
of General Gates. To foreclose 
all suspicion of participation in 
these views, Lafayette proceeded 
to the seat of Congress, and, ac- 
cepting the important charge which 
it was proposed to assign to him, 
obtained, at his particular request, 
that he should be considered as an 
officer detached from the army of 
Washington, and to remain under 
his orders. He then repaired in 
person to Albany, to take com- 
mand of the troops who were to 
assemble at that place, in order to 
cross the lakes on the ice, and at- 
tack Montreal ; but, on arriving at 
Albany, he found none of the pro- 
mised preparations in readiness — 
they were never effected. Con- 



GENERAL LAFAYETTE. 65 

gress some time after relinquished 
the design, and the marquis was 
ordered to rejoin the army of 
Washington. 

In the succeeding month of May, 
his military talent was displayed by 
the masterly retreat effected in the 
presence of an overwhelming supe- 
riority of the enemy's force from 
the position at Barren Hill. 

He was soon after distinguished 
at the battle of Monmouth ; and in 
September, 1778, a resolution of 
Congress declared their high sense 
of his services, not only in the 
field, but in his exertions to con- 
ciliate and heal dissensions between 
the officers of the French fleet un- 
der the command of the Count 
d'Estaing and some of the native 
officers of our army. These dis- 



66 LIFE OF 

sensions had arisen in the first 
moments of co-operation in the 
service, and had threatened perni- 
cious consequences. 

In the month of April, 1776, the 
combined wisdom of the Count de 
Vergennes and of Mr. Turgot, the 
prime minister, and the financier 
of Louis the Sixteenth, had brought 
him to the conclusion that the 
event most desirable to France, 
with regard to the controversy be- 
tween Great Britain and her Ameri- 
can colonies, was, that the insur- 
rection should be suppressed. This 
judgment, evincing only the total 
absence of all moral considerations, 
in the estimate, by these eminent 
statesmen, of what was desirable 
to France, had undergone a great 
change by the close of the year 



GENERAL LAFAYETTE. 67 

1777. The Declaration of Inde- 
pendence had changed the question 
between the parties. The popular 
feeling of France was all on the 
side of the Americans. The dar- 
ing and romantic movement of La- 
fayette, in defiance of the govern- 
ment itself, then highly favoured 
by public opinion, was followed by 
universal admiration. The spon- 
taneous spirit of the people gradu- 
ally spread itself even over the 
rank corruption of the court ; a 
suspicious and deceptive neutrality 
succeeded to an ostensible exclu- 
sion of the insurgents from the 
ports of France, till the capitulation 
of Burgoyne satisfied the casuists 
of international law at Versailles, 
that the suppression of the insur- 
rection was no longer the most 



88 Life of 



desirable of events ; but that the 
United States were, de facto, sove- 
reign and independent, and that 
France might conclude a treaty of 
commerce with them, without giv- 
ing just cause of offence to the 
step-mother country. On the 6th 
of February, 1778, a treaty W 
commerce between France and the 
United States was concluded, and 
with it, on the same day, a treaty 
of eventual defensive alliance, to 
take effect only in the event of 
Great Britain's resenting, by war 
against France, the consummation 
of the commercial treaty. The 
war immediately ensued, and in 
the summer of 1778, a French 
fleet, under the command of Count 
d'Estaing, was sent to co-operate 
with the forces of the United States 



GENERAL LAFAYETTE. 69 



sen 

■I 
,ffe 
roi 



for the maintenance of their inde- 
pendence. 

By these events the position of 
the Marquis de Lafayette was es- 
sentially changed. It became ne- 
sary for him to reinstate himself 
the good graces of his sovereign, 
ended at his absenting himself 
rom his country without permis- 
sion, but gratified with the distinc- 
tion which he had acquired by gal- 
lant deeds in a service now become 
that of France herself. At the 
close of the campaign of 1778, 
with the approbation of his friend 
and patron, the commander-in- 
chief, he addressed a letter to the 
president of Congress, representing 
his then present circumstances with 
the confidence of affection and gra- 
titude, observing that the senti- 



70 LIFE OF 

ments which bound him to his 
country could never be more pro- 
perly spoken of than in the pre- 
sence of men who had done so 
much for their own. " As Ion 
continued he, " as I thought I c 
dispose of myself, I made it 
pride and pleasure to fight uncf 
American colours, in defence of a 
cause which I dare more particu- 
larly call ours, because I had the 
good fortune of bleeding for her. 
Now, sir, that France is involved 
in a war, I am urged, by a sense 
of my duty, as well as by the love 
of my country, to present myself 
before the king, and know in what 
manner he judges proper to employ 
my services. The most agreeable 
of all will always be such as may 
enable me to serve the common 



i SO 

ijg," 

nder 



GENERAL LAFAYETTE. 71 

cause among those whose friend- 
ship I had the happiness to obtain, 
and whose fortune I had the honour 
to follow in less smiling times. 
That reason, and others, which I 
leave to the feelings of Congress, 
engage me to beg from them the 
liberty of going home for the next 
winter. 

"As long as there were any 
hopes of an active campaign, I did 
not think of leaving the field ; now, 
that I see a very peaceable and un- 
disturbed moment, I take this op- 
portunity of waiting on Congress." 

In the remainder of the letter he 
solicited that, in the event of his 
request being granted, he might be 
considered as a soldier on furlough, 
heartily wishing to regain his co- 
lours and his esteemed and beloved 



72 LIFE OF 



fellow-soldiers. And he closes 
with a tender of any services which 
he might be enabled to render to 
the American cause in his own 
country. 

On the receipt of this letter,^^i 
companied by one from General 
Washington, recommending to 
Congress, in terms most honou^^ 
able to the marquis, a compliance 
with his request, that body imme- 
diately passed resolutions granting 
him an unlimited leave of absence, 
with permission to return to the 
United States at his own most con- 
venient time ; that the president of 
Congress should write him a letter 
returning him the thanks of Con- 
gress for that disinterested zeal 
which had led him to America, and 
for the services he had rendered to 



m 



GENERAL LAFAYETTE. 75 

the United States by the exertion 
of his courage and abilities on 
many signal occasions ; and that 
the minister plenipotentiary of the 
United States at the Court of Ver- 
sailles should be directed to cause 
an elegant sword, with proper de- 
vices, to be made, and presented to 
him in the name of the United 
States. These resolutions were 
communicated to him in a letter 
expressive of the sensibility con- 
genial to them, from the president 
of Congress, Henry Laurens. 

He embarked in January, 1779, 
in the frigate Alliance, at Boston, 
and on the succeeding 12th day of 
February, presented himself at Ver- 
sailles. Twelve months had already 
elapsed since the conclusion of the 
treaties of commerce and of event- 



76 LIFE OF 

ual alliance between France and 
the United States. They had, du- 
ring the greater part of that time, 
been deeply engaged in war with a 
common cause against Great Bri- 
tain, and it was the cause in which 
Lafayette had been shedding his 
blood ; yet, instead of receiving 
him with open arms, as the pride 
and ornament of his country, a cold 
and hollow-hearted order was issued 
to him, not to present himself at 
court, but to consider himself under 
arrest, with permission to receive 
visits only from his relations. This 
ostensible mark of the royal dis- 
pleasure was to last eight days, and 
Lafayette manifested his sense of it 
only by a letter to the Count de 
Vergennes, inquiring whether the 
interdiction upori^ him to receive 



«^ 



GENERAL LAFAYETTE, 77 

visits was to be considered as ex- 
tending to that of Doctor Franklin. 
The sentiment of universal admi- 
ration which had followed him at 
his first departure, greatly increased 
by his splendid career of service 
during the two years of his absence, 
indemnified him for the indignity of 
the courtly rebuke. 

He remained in France through 
the year 1779, and returned to the 
scene of action early in the en- 
suing year. He continued in the 
French service, and was appointed 
to command the king's own regi- 
ment of dragoons, stationed during 
the year, in Various parts of the 
kingdom, and holding an incessant 
correspondence with the ministers 
of foreign affairs, and of war, 
urging the employment of a land 



is 



and naval force in aid of the Ame- 
rican cause. "The Marquis de 
Lafayette," says Doctor Franklin, 
in a letter of the 4th of March, 
1780, to the president of Congress, 
" who during his residence in 
France, has been extremely zealous 
in supporting our cause on all oc- 
casions, returns again to fight for 
it. He is infinitely esteemed and 
beloved here, and I am persuaded 
will do everything in his power to 
merit a continuance of the same 
affection from America." 

Immediately after his arrival in 
the United States, it was, on the 
16th of May, 1780, resolved in 
Congress, that they considered his 
return to America to resume his 
command, as a fresh proof of the 
disinterested zeal and persevering 



GENERAL LAFAYETTE. 79 

attachmrnt which have justly re- 
commended him to the public con- 
fidence and applause, and that they 
received with pleasure a tender of 
the further services of so gallant 
and meritorious an officer. 

From this time until the termina- 
tion of the campaign of 1781, by 
the surrender of Lord Cornwallis 
and his army at Yorktown, his 
service was of incessant activity, 
always signalized by military talents 
unsurpassed, and by a spirit never 
to be subdued. At the time of the 
treason of Arnold, Lafayette was 
accompanying his commander-in- 
chief to an important conference 
and consultation with the French 
general, Rochambeau ; and then, 
as in every stage of the war, it 
seemed as if the position which he oc- 



80 LIFE OF 

cupied, his personal character, his in- 
dividual relations with Washington, 
with the officers of both the allied 
armies, and with the armies them- 
selves, had been specially ordered 
to promote and secure that harmony 
and mutual good understanding in- 
dispensable to the ultimate success 
of the common cause. His position, 
too, as a foreigner by birth, a Eu- 
ropean, a volunteer in the American 
service, and a person of high rank 
in his native country, pointed him 
out as peculiarly suited to the 
painful duty of deciding upon the 
character of the crime, and upon 
the fate of the British officer, the 
accomplice and victim of the de- 
tested traitor, Arnold. 

In the early part of the campaign 
of 1781, when Cornwallis, with 



GENERAL LAFAYETTE. 81 

an overwhelming force, was spread- 
ing ruin and devastation over the 
southern portion of the union, we 
find Lafayette, with means alto- 
gether inadequate, charged with the 
defence of the territory of Virginia. 
Always equal to the emergencies 
in which circumstances placed him, 
his expedients for encountering and 
surmounting the obstacles which 
they cast in his way are invariably 
stamped with the peculiarities of 
his character. The troops placed 
under his command for the defence 
of Virginia, were chiefly taken from 
the eastern regiments, unseasoned 
to the climate of the south, and 
prejudiced against it as unfavourable 
to the health of the natives of the 
more rigorous regions of the north. 
Desertions became frequent, till 



6 



82 LIFE OF 

they threatened the very dissolution 
of the corps. Instead of resorting 
to military execution to retain his 
men, he appeals to the sympathies 
of honour. He states, in general 
orders, the great danger and diffi- 
culty of the enterprise upon which 
he is about to embark ; represents 
the only possibility by which it 
can promise success, the faithful 
adherence of the soldiers to their 
chief, and his confidence that they 
will not abandon him. He then 
adds, that if, however, any indi- 
vidual of the detachment was un- 
willing to follow him, a passport to 
return to his home should be forth- 
with granted him upon his applica- 
tion. It is to a cause like that of 
American independence that re- 
sources like this are congenial. 



GENERAL LAFAYETTE. 83 

After these general orders, nothing 
more was heard of desertion. The 
very cripples of the army preferred 
paying for their own transportation, 
to follow the corps, rather than to 
ask for the dismission which had 
been made so easily accessible to all. 
But how shall the deficiencies of 
the military chest be supplied? 
The want of money was heavily 
pressing upon the service in every 
direction. Where are the sinews 
of war 1 How are the troops to 
march without shoes, linen, clothing 
of all descriptions, and other ne- 
cessaries of life? Lafayette has 
found them all. From the patriotic 
merchants of Baltimore he obtains, 
on the pledge of his own personal 
credit, a loan of money, adequate 
to the purchase of the materials ; 



84 LIFE OF 

and from the fair hands ofthe 
daughters of the monumental city, 
even then worthy so to be called, 
he obtains the toil of making up 
the needed garments. 

The details of the campaign, 
from its unpromising outset, when 
Cornwallis, the British commander, 
exulted in anticipation that the boy 
could not escape him, till the 
storming of the twin redoubts, in 
emulation of gallantry by the val- 
iant Frenchmen of Viomesnil, and 
the American fellow-soldiers of La- 
fayette, led by him to victory at 
Yorktown, must be left to the re- 
cording pen of history. Both re- 
doubts were carried at the point of 
the sword, and Cornwallis, with 
averted face, surrendered his sword 
to Washington. 



!■» 



GENERAL LAFAYETTE. 87 

This was the last vital struggle 
of the war, which, however, lin- 
gered through another year rather 
of negotiation than of action. Im- 
mediately after the capitulation at 
Yorktown, Lafayette asked and ob- 
tained again a leave of absence to 
visit his family and his country, 
and with this closed his military ser- 
vice in the field, during the revolu- 
tionary war. But it wag not for the 
individual enjoyment of his renown 
that he returned to France. The 
resolutions of Congress accompa- 
nying that which gave him a dis- 
cretionary leave of absence, while 
honorary in the highest degree to 
him, were equally marked by a 
grant of virtual credentials for ne- 
gotiation, and by the trust of confi- 
dential powers, together with a 



88 LIFE OF 

letter of the warmest commendation 
of the gallant soldier to the favour 
of his king. The ensuing year 
was consumed in preparations for a 
formidable combined French and 
Spanish expedition against the Bri- 
tish Islands in the West Indies, and 
particularly the Island of Jamaica ; 
thence to recoil upon New York, 
and to pursue the offensive war 
into Canada. The fleet destined 
for this gigantic undertaking was 
already assembled at Cadiz ; and 
Lafayette, appointed the chief of 
the staff, was there ready to embark 
upon this perilous adventure, when, 
on the 30th of November, 1782, 
the preliminary treaties of peace were 
concluded between his Britannic 
Majesty on one part, and the allied 
powers of France, Spain, and the 



GENERAL LAFAYETTE. 89 

United States of America, on the 
other. The first intelligence of 
this event received by the American 
Congress was in the communication 
of a letter from Lafayette. 

The war of American Indepen- 
dence is closed. The people of the 
North American confederation are 
in union, sovereign and indepen- 
dent. Lafayette, at twenty-five 
years of age, has lived the life of a 
patriarch, and illustrated the career 
of a hero. Had his days upon 
earth been then numbered, and had 
he then slept with his fathers, illus- 
trious as for centuries their names 
had been, his name, to the end of 
time, would have transcended them 
all. Fortunate youth ! fortunate 
beyond even the measure of his 
companions in arms with whom he 



90 LIFE OF 

had achieved the glorious consum- 
mation of American independence. 
His fame was all his own ; not 
cheaply earned ; not ignobly won. 
His fellow-soldiers had been the 
champions and defenders of their 
country. They reaped for them- 
selves, for their wives, their chil- 
dren, their posterity to the latest 
time, the rewards of their dangers 
and their toils. Lafayette had 
watched, and laboured, and fought, 
and bled, not for himself, not for 
his family, not, in the first instance, 
even for his country. In the legend- 
ary tales of chivalry, we read of 
tournaments at which a foreign and 
unknown knight suddenly presents 
himself, armed in complete steel, 
and, with the vizor down, enters the 
v'mv to contend with the assembled 



GENERAL LAFAYETTE. 91 

flower of knighthood for the prize 
of honour, to be awarded by the 
hand of beauty ; bears it in triumph 
away, and disappears from the as- 
tonished multitude of competitors 
and spectators of the feats of arms. 
But where, in the rolls of history, 
where in the fictions of romance, 
where, but in the life of Lafayette, 
has been seen the noble stranger, 
flying, with the tribute of his name, 
his rank, his affluence, his ease, his 
domestic bliss, his treasure, his 
blood, to the relief of a suffering 
and distant land, in the hour of her 
deepest calamity — baring his bo- 
som to her foes ; and not at the 
transient pageantry of a tourna- 
ment, but for a succession of five 
years sharing all the vicissitudes of 
her fortunes ; always eager to ap- 



92 LIFE OF 



pear at the post of danger — tern* 
pering the glow of youthful ardour 
with the cold caution of a veteran 
commander ; bold and daring in 
action ; prompt in execution ; rapid 
in pursuit ; fertile in expedients ; 
unattainable in retreat ; often ex- 
posed, but never surprised, never 
disconcerted ; eluding his enemy 
when within his fancied grasp ; 
bearing upon him with irresistible 
sway when of force to cope with 
him in the conflict of arms ? And 
what is this but the diary of La- 
fayette, from the day of his rally- 
ing the scattered fugitives of the 
Brandy wine, insensible of the blood 
flowing from his wound, to the 
storming of the redoubt at York- 
town ? 

Henceforth, as a public man. 



GENERAL LAFAYETTE. 93 

Lafayette is to be considered as a 
Frenchman, always active and ar- 
dent to serve the United States, but 
no longer in their service as an 
officer. So transcendent had been 
his merits in the common cause, 
that, to reward them, the rule of 
progressive advancement in the 
armies of France was set aside for 
him. He received from the minister 
of war a notification that from the 
day of his retirement from the ser- 
vice of the United States as a ma- 
jor-general, at the close of the war, 
he should hold the same rank in 
the armies of France, to date from 
the day of the capitulation of Corn- 
wall is. 

Henceforth he is a Frenchman, 
destined to perform in the history 
of his country a part, as peculiarly 



94 



his own, and not less glorious than 
that which he had performed in the 
war of independence. A short pe- 
riod of profound peace followed the 
great triumph of freedom. The 
desire of Lafayette once more to 
see the land of his adoption and the 
associates of his glory, the fellow- 
soldiers who had become to him as 
brothers, and the friend and patron 
of his youth, who had become to 
him as a father ; sympathizing with 
their desire once more to see him — 
to see in their prosperity him who 
had first come to them in their af- 
fliction, induced him, in the year 
1784, to pay a visit to the United 
States. 

On the 4th of August, of that 
year, he landed at New York, and, 
in the space of five months from 



GENERAL LAFAYETTE. 95 

that time, visited his venerable 
friend at Mount Vernon, where he 
was then living in retirement, and 
traversed ten states of the union, 
receiving everywhere, from their 
legislative assemblies, from the mu- 
nicipal bodies of the cities and 
towns through which he passed, 
from the officers of the army, his 
late associates, now restored to the 
virtues and occupations of private 
life, and even from the recent emi- 
grants from Ireland, who had come 
to adopt for their country the self- 
emancipated land, addresses of 
gratulation and of joy, the effusions 
of hearts grateful in the enjoyment 
of the blessings for the possession 
of which they had been so largely 
indebted to his exertions — and 
finally, from the United States of 



96 LIFE OF 



America in Congress assembled at 
Trenton. 

On the 9th of December it was 
resolved by that body that a com- 
mittee, to consist of one member 
from each state, should be appoint- 
ed to receive, and in the name of 
Congress take leave of the marquis. 
That they should be instructed to 
assure him that Congress continued 
to entertain the same high sense of 
his abilities and zeal to promote the 
welfare of America, both here and 
in Europe, which they had fre- 
quently expressed and manifested 
on former occasions, and which the 
recent marks of his attention to 
their commercial and other inte- 
rests had perfectly confirmed. 
" That, as his uniform and unceas- 
ing attachment to this country has 



GENERAL LAFAYETTE. 9? 

resembled that of a patriotic citizen, 
the United States regard him with 
particular affection, and will not 
cease to feel an interest in whatever 
may concern his honour and pros- 
perity, and that their best and 
kindest wishes will always attend 
him." 

And it was further resolved, that 
a letter be written to his Most Chris- 
tian Majesty, to be signed by his 
Excellency the President of Con- 
gress, expressive of the high sense 
which the United States in Congress 
assembled entertain of the zeal, 
talents, and meritorious services of 
the Marquis de Lafayette, and re- 
commending him to the favour and 
patronage of his Majesty* 

The first of these resolutions 
was, on the next day, carried into 



98 LIFE OF 



execution. At a solemn interview 
with the committee of Congress, 
received in their hall, and addressed 
by the chairman of their commit* 
tee, John Jay, the purport of these 
resolutions was communicated to 
him. He replied in terms of fer- 
vent sensibility for the kindness 
manifested personally to himself; 
and, with allusions to the situation, 
the prospects, and the duties of the 
people of this country, he pointed 
out the great interests which he be- 
lieved it indispensable to their wel- 
fare that they should cultivate and 
cherish. In the following memo- 
rable sentences, the ultimate objects 
of his solicitude are disclosed in a 
tone deeply solemn and impressive: 
" May this immense temple of 
freedom," said he, " ever stand, a 



GENERAL LAFAYETTE. 99 

lesson to oppressors, an example to 
the oppressed, a sanctuary for the 
rights of mankind ! and may these 
happy United States attain that 
complete splendour and prosperity 
which will illustrate the blessings 
of their government, and for ages 
to come rejoice the departed souls 
of its founders." 

Fellow-citizens ! Ages have pass- 
ed away since these words were 
spoken ; but ages are the years of 
the existence of nations. The 
founders of this immense temple of 
freedom have all departed, save 
here and there a solitary exception, 
even while I speak, at the point of 
taking wing, The prayer of La- 
fayette is not yet consummated. 
Ages upon ages are still to pass 
away before it can have its full ac- 



100 LIFE OF 



complishment ; and, for its full ac- 
complishment, his spirit, hovering 
over our heads, in more than echoes 
talks around these walls. It repeats 
the prayer which from his lips fifty 
years ago was at once a parting 
blessing and a prophecy ; for, were it 
possible for the whole human race, 
now breathing the breath of life, to 
be assembled within this hall, your 
orator would, in your name and in 
that of your constituents, appeal to 
them to testify for your fathers of 
the last generation, that, so far as 
has depended upon them, the bless- 
ing of Lafayette has been prophecy. 
Yes ! this immense temple of free- 
dom still stands, a lesson to oppres- 
sors, an example to the oppressed, 
and a sanctuary for the rights of 
mankind. Yes ! with the smiles 



GENERAL LAFAYETTE. 101 

of a benignant providence, the 
splendour and prosperity of these 
happy United States have illustra- 
ted the blessings of their govern- 
ment, and, we may humbly hope, 
have rejoiced the departed souls of 
its founders. For the past your 
fathers and you have been respon- 
sible. The charge of the future 
devolves upon you and upon your 
children. The vestal fire of free- 
dom is in your custody. May the 
souls of its departed founders never 
be called to witness its extinction 
by neglect, noi' a soil upon the pu- 
rity of its keepers ! 

With this valedictory, Lafayette 
took, as he and those who heard 
him then believed, a final leave of 
the people of the United States. 
He returned to France, and arrived 



102 LIFE OF 

at Paris on the 25th of January, 
1785. 

He continued to take a deep in- 
terest in the concerns of the United 
States, and exerted his influence 
with the French government to ob- 
tain reductions of duties favourable 
to their commerce and fisheries. 
In the summer of 1786, he visited 
several of the German courts, and 
attended the last great review by- 
Frederick the Second of his veteran 
army — a review unusually splen* 
did, and specially remarkable by 
the attendance of many of the most 
distinguished military commanders 
of Europe. In the same year the 
legislature of Virginia manifested 
the continued recollection of his 
services rendered to the people of 
that commonwealth, by a compli- 



GENERAL LAFAYETTE. 103 

mentary token of gratitude not less 
honourable than it was unusual. 
They resolved that two busts of 
Lafayette, to be executed by the 
celebrated sculptor, Houdon, should 
be procured at their expense ; that 
one of them should be placed in 
their own legislative hall, and the 
other presented, in their name, to 
the municipal authorities of the city 
of Paris. It was accordingly pre- 
sented by Mr. Jefferson, then min- 
| ister plenipotentiary of the United 
i States in France, and, by the per- 
i mission of Louis the Sixteenth, was 
accepted, and, with appropriate 
solemnity, placed in one of the 
halls of the Hotel de Ville of the 
metropolis of France. 

We have gone through one 
stage of the life of Lafayette : we 



104 LIFE OF 

are now to see him acting upon 
another theatre — in a cause still 
essentially the same, but. in the ap- 
plication of its principles to his 
own country. 

The immediately originating 
question which occasioned the 
French revolution was the same 
with that from which the Ameri- 
can revolution had sprung — taxa- 
tion of the people without their 
consent. For nearly two centu- 
ries the kings of France had been 
accustomed to levy taxes upon the 
people by royal ordinances. But it 
was necessary that these ordinances 
should be registered in the parlia- 
ments or judicial tribunals ; and 
these parliaments claimed the right 
of remonstrating against them, and 
sometimes refused the registry of 



GENERAL LAFAYETTE. 105 

them itself. The members of the 
parliaments held their offices by- 
purchase, but were appointed by 
the king, and were subject to ban- 
ishment or imprisonment, at his 
pleasure. Louis the Fifteenth, to- 
wards the close of his reign, had 
abolished the parliaments, but they 
had been restored at the accession 
of his successor. 

The finances of the kingdom 
were in extreme disorder. The 
minister, or comptroller general, 
De Calonne, after attempting va- 
rious projects for obtaining the sup- 
plies, the amount and need of which 
he was with lavish hand daily in- 
creasing, bethought himself, at last, 
of calling for the counsel of others. 
He prevailed upon the king to con- 
voke, not the states general, but an 



106 LIFE OF 

assembly of notables. There was 
something ridiculous in the very- 
name by which this meeting was 
called, but it consisted of a selec- 
tion from all the grandees and dig- 
nitaries, of the kingdom. The two 
brothers of the king — all the princes 
of the blood, archbishops and bish- 
ops, dukes and peers — the chan- 
cellor and presiding members of 
the parliaments ; distinguished 
members of the noblesse, and the 
mayors and chief magistrates of a 
few of the principal cities of the 
kingdom, constituted this assembly. 
It was a representation of every 
interest but that of the people. 
They were appointed by the king 
— were members of the highest 
aristocracy, and were assembled 
with the design that their delibera- 



GENERAL LAFAYETTE. 107 

tions should be confined exclusively 
to the subjects submitted to their 
consideration by the minister. These 
were certain plans devised by him 
for replenishing the insolvent trea- 
sury, by assessments upon the 
privileged classes, the very princes, 
nobles, ecclesiastics, and magis- 
trates exclusively represented in 
the assembly itself. 

Of this meeting the Marquis de 
Lafayette was a member. It was 
held in February, 1787, and termi- 
nated in the overthrow and banish- 
ment of the minister by whom it 
had been convened. In the fiscal 
concerns which absorbed the care 
and attention of others, Lafayette 
took comparatively little interest. 
His views were more comprehen- 
sive. 



I 

1 108 LIFE OF 

The assembly consisted of one 
hundred and thirty-seven persons, 
and divided itself into seven sec- 
tions or bureaux, each presided by 
a prince of the blood. Lafayette 
was allotted to the division under 
the presidency of the Count d'Ar- 
tois, the younger brother of the 
king, and since known as Charles 
the Tenth. The propositions made 
by Lafayette were — 

1 . The suppression of Letters de 
Cachet, and the abolition of all ar- 
bitrary imprisonment. 

2. The establishment of religious 
toleration, and the restoration of 
the protestants to their civil rights. 

3. The convocation of a nation- 
al assembly, representing the peo- 
ple of France — personal liberty — 
religious liberty — and a represent- 



GENERAL LAFAYETTE. 109 

ative assembly of the people. These 
were his demands. 

The first and second of them 
produced, perhaps, at the time, no 
deep impression upon the assembly, 
nor upon the public. Arbitrary 
imprisonment, and the religious 
persecution of the protestants had 
become universally odious. They 
were worn-out instruments, even 
in the hands of those who wielded 
them. There was none to defend 
them. 

But the demand for a national 
assembly startled the prince at the 
head of the bureau. " What !" said 
the Count d'Artois, " do you ask for 
the states general?" " Yes, sir," was 
the answer of Lafayette, "and for 
something yet better." " You desire, 
then," replied the "prince, "that I 



110 LIFE OF 



should take in writing, and report 
to the king, that the motion to con- 
voke the states general has been 
made by the Marquis de Lafayette?" 
" Yes, sir ;" and the name of La- 
fayette was accordingly reported to 
the king. 

The assembly of notables was 
dissolved — De Calonne was dis- 
placed and banished, and his suc- 
cessor undertook to raise the needed 
funds, by the authority of royal 
edicts. The war of litigation with 
the parliaments recommenced, 
which terminated only with a posi- 
tive promise that the states general 
should be convoked. 

From that time a total revolution 
of government in France was in 
progress. It has been a solemn, 
a sublime, often a most painful, 



GENERAL LAFAYETTE. Ill 

and yet, in the contemplation of 
great results, a refreshing and cheer- 
ing contemplation. I cannot fol- 
low it in its overwhelming multi- 
tude of details, even as connected 
with the life and character of La- 
fayette. A second assembly of 
notables succeeded the first ; and 
then an assembly of the states 
general, first to deliberate in sepa- 
rate orders of clergy, nobility, and 
third estate : but, finally, constitu- 
ting itself a national assembly, and 
forming a constitution of limited 
monarchy, with an hereditary royal 
executive, and a legislature in a 
single assembly representing the 
people. 

Lafayette was a member of the 
states general first assembled. 
Their meeting was signalized by a 



112 LIFE OF 



struggle between the several order's 
of which they were composed, 
which resulted in breaking them 
all down into one national assem* 
bly. 

The convocation of the states 
general had, in one respect, opera- 
ted, in the progress of the French 
revolution, like the Declaration of 
Independence in that of North 
America. It had changed the ques- 
tion in controversy. It was, on the 
part of the king of France, a con- 
cession that he had no lawful power 
to tax the people without their con- 
sent. The states general, there- 
fore, met with this admission 
already conceded by the king. In 
the American conflict the British 
government never yielded the con- 
cession. They undertook to main- 



GENERAL LAFAYETTE. 113 

tain their supposed right of arbitrary 
taxation by force; and then the 
people of the colonies renounced 
all community of government, not 
only with the king and parliament, 
but with the British nation. They 
re-constructed the fabric of govern- 
ment for themselves, and held the 
people of Britain as foreigners — - 
friends in peace — enemies in war. 
The concession by Louis the 
Sixteenth, implied in the convoca- 
tion of the states general, was a 
virtual surrender of absolute power 
— an acknowledgment that, as ex- 
ercised by himself and his prede- 
cessors, it had been usurped. It 
was, in substance, an abdication of 
his crown. There was no power 
which he exercised as king of 
France, the lawfulness of which 



114 LIFE OF 



was not contestable on the same 
principle which denied him the 
right of taxation. When the as- 
sembly of the states general met at 
Versailles, in May, 1789, there 
was but a shadow of the royal 
authority left. They felt that the 
power of the nation was in their 
hands, and they were not sparing 
in the use of it. The representa- 
tives of the third estates, double 
in numbers to those of the clergy 
and nobility, constituted themselves 
a national assembly, and, as a sig- 
nal for the demolition of all privi- 
leged orders, refused to deliberate 
in separate chambers, and thus 
compelled the representatives of the 
clergy and nobility to merge their 
separate existence in the general 
mass of the popular representation. 



GENERAL LAFAYETTE. 115 

Thus the edifice of society was 
to be re-constructed in France as it 
had been in America. The king 
made a feeble attempt to overawe 
the assembly, by calling regiments 
of troops to Versailles, and sur- 
rounding with them, the hall of 
their meeting. But there was de- 
fection in the army itself, and even 
the person of the king soon ceased 
to be at his own disposal. On the 
11th of July, 1789, in the midst of 
the fermentation which had suc- 
ceeded the fall of the monarchy, 
and while the assembly was sur- 
rounded by armed soldiers, La- 
fayette presented to them his 
Declaration of Rights — the first de- 
claration of human rights ever 
proclaimed in Europe. It was 
adopted, and became the basis of 



116 LIFE OF 



that which the assembly promul- 
gated with their constitution. 

It was in this hemisphere, and in 
our own country, that all its prin- 
ciples had been imbibed. At the 
very moment when the declaration 
was presented, the convulsive strug- 
gle between the expiring monarchy 
and the new-born but portentous 
anarchy of the Parisian populace 
was taking place. The royal palace 
and the hall of the assembly were 
surrounded with troops, and insur- 
rection was kindling at Paris. In 
the midst of the popular commotion, 
a deputation of sixty members, with 
Lafayette at their head,- was sent 
from the assembly to v <. tranquillize 
the people of Paris, and that inci- 
dent was the occasion of the institu- 
tion of the National Guard through- 



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GENERAL LAFAYETTE. 119 

out the realm, and of the appoint- 
ment, with the approbation of the 
king, of Lafayette as their general 
commander-in-chief. 

This event, without vacating his 
seat in the national assembly, con- 
nected him at once with the mili- 
tary and the popular movement of 
the revolution. The national guard 
was the armed militia of the whole 
kingdom, embodied for the preser- 
vation of order, and the protection 
of persons and property, as well as 
for the establishment of the liber- 
ties of the people. In his double 
capacity of commander-general of 
this force, and of a representative 
in the constituent assembly, his 
career, for a period of more than 
three years, was beset with the 
most imminent dangers, and with 



120 LIFE OF 

difficulties beyond all human power 
to surmount. 

The ancient monarchy of France 
had crumbled into ruins. A na- 
tional assembly, formed by an ir- 
regular representation of clergy, 
nobles, and third estate, after melt- 
ing at the fire of a revolution into 
one body, had transformed itself 
into a constituent assembly repre- 
senting the people, had assumed 
the exercise of all the powers of 
government extorted from the hands 
of the king, and undertaken to 
form a constitution for the French 
nation, founded at once upon the 
theory of human rights, and upon 
the preservation of a royal heredi- 
tary crown upon the head of Louis 
the Sixteenth. Lafayette sincere- 
ly believed that such a system 



GENERAL LAFAYETTE. 121 

would not be absolutely incompati- 
ble with the nature of things. 

An hereditary monarchy, sur- 
rounded by popular institutions, 
presented itself to his imagination 
as a practicable form of govern- 
ment ; nor is it certain that even to 
his last days he ever abandoned 
this persuasion. The element of 
hereditary monarchy in this con- 
stitution was indeed not congenial 
to it. The prototype from which 
the whole fabric had been drawn, 
had no such element in its compo- 
sition. A feeling of generosity, of 
compassion, of commiseration with 
the unfortunate prince then upon 
the throne, who had been his sove- 
reign, and for his ill-fated family, 
mingled itself, perhaps unconscious- 
ly to himself, with his well-reason- 



122 LIFE OF 



ed faith in the abstract principles 
of a republican creed. The total 
abolition of the monarchial feature 
undoubtedly belonged to his theory, 
but the family of Bourbon had still 
a strong hold on the affections of 
the French people; history had 
not made up a record favourable to 
the establishment of elective kings 
— a strong executive head was ab- 
solutely necessary to curb the im- 
petuosities of the people of France ; 
and the same doctrine which played 
upon the fancy, and crept upon the 
kind-hearted benevolence of Lafay- 
ette, was adopted by a large ma- 
jority of the national assembly, 
sanctioned by the suffrages of its 
most intelligent, virtuous, and pa- 
triotic members, and was finally 
embodied in that royal democracy 



GENERAL LAFAYETTE. 123 

the result of their labours, sent 
forth to the world, under the guar- 
anty of numberless oaths, as the 
constitution of France for all after- 
time. 

But, during the same period, 
after the first meeting of the states 
general, and while they were in 
actual conflict with the expiring 
energies of the crown, and with the 
exclusive privileges of the clergy 
and nobility, another portentous 
power had arisen, and entered with 
terrific activity into the controver- 
sies of the time. This was the 
power of popular insurrection, or- 
ganized by voluntary associations 
of clubs, and impelled to action by 
the municipal authorities of the city 
of Paris. 

The first movements of the peo- 



124 LIFE OF 

pie in the state of insurrection took 
place on the 12th of July, 1789, 
and issued in the destruction of the 
Bastile, and in the murder of its 
governor, and of several other per- 
sons, hung up at lamp-posts, or 
torn to pieces by the frenzied mul- 
titude, without form of trial, and 
without shadow of guilt. 

The Bastile had long been odious 
as the place of confinement of per- 
sons arrested by arbitrary orders 
for offences against the government, 
and its destruction was hailed 
by most of the friends of liberty 
throughout the world as an act of 
patriotism and magnanimity on the 
part of the people. The brutal 
ferocity of the murders was over- 
looked or palliated in the glory of 
the achievement of razing to its 



GENERAL LAFAYETTE. 127 



foundations the execrated citadel of 
despotism. But, as the summary- 
justice of insurrection can manifest 
itself only by destruction, the ex- 
ample once set became a precedent 
for a series of years for scenes so 
atrocious, and for butcheries so 
merciless and horrible, that memo- 
ry revolts at the task of recalling 
them to the mind. 

It. would be impossible, within our 
limits to follow the details of the 
French revolution to the final de- 
thronement of Louis the Sixteenth, 
and the extinction of the constitution- 
al monarchy of France, on the 10th 
of August, 1792. During that pe- 
riod, the two distinct powers were 
in continual operation — sometimes 
in concert with each other, some- 
times at irreconcilable opposition. 



128 LIFE OF 



Of these powers, one was the peo- 
ple of France, represented by the 
Parisian populace in insurrection ; 
the other was the people of France, 
represented successively by the 
constituent assembly, which formed 
the constitution of 1791, and by 
the legislative assembly, elected to 
carry it into execution. 

The movements of the insurgent 
power were occasionally convulsive 
and cruel, without mitigation or 
mercy. 'Guided by secret springs : 
prompted by vindictive and san- 
guinary ambition, directed by hands 
unseen to objects of individual ag- 
grandizement, its agency fell like 
the thunderbolt, and swept like the 
whirlwind. 

The proceedings of the assem- 
blies were deliberative and intellec- 



GENERAL LAFAYETTE. 129 

tual. They began by grasping at 
the whole power of the monarchy, 
and they finished by sinking under 
the dictation of the Parisian popu- 
lace. The constituent assembly 
numbered among its members 
many individuals of great ability, 
and of pure principles, but they 
were overawed and domineered by 
that other representation of the peo- 
ple of France, which, through the 
instrumentality of the jacobin club, 
and the municipality of Paris, dis- 
concerted the wisdom of the wise, 
nnd scattered to the winds the 
counsels of the prudent. 

It was impossible that, under the 
perturbations of such a controlling 
power, a constitution suited to the 
character and circumstances of the 
nation should be formed. 



130 LIFE OF 



Through the whole of this pe- 
riod, the part performed by Lafay- 
ette was without parallel in history. 
The annals of the human race ex- 
hibit no other instance of a position 
comparable for its unintermitted 
perils, its deep responsibilities, and 
its providential issues, with that 
which he occupied as commander- 
general of the national guard, and as 
a leading member of the constituent 
assembly. In the numerous insur- 
rections of the people, he saved the 
lives of multitudes devoted as vic- 
tims, and always at the most im- 
minent hazard of his own. On the 
fifth and sixth of October, 1789, he 
saved the lives of Louis the Six- 
teenth, and of his queen. He es- 
caped, time after time, the daggers 
charged by princely conspiracy on 



GENERAL LAFAYETTE. 131 

one hand, and by popular frenzy 
on the other. He witnessed, too, 
without being able to prevent it, the 
butchery of Foulon before his eyes; 
and the reeking heart of Berthier, 
torn "from his lifeless trunk, was 
held up in exulting triumph before 
him. On this occasion, and on 
another, he threw Up his commis- 
sion as commander of the national 
guards ; but who could have suc- 
ceeded him, even with equal power 
to restrain these volcanic excesses? 
At the earnest solicitation of those 
who well knew that his place could 
never be supplied, he resumed and 
continued in the command until the 
solemn proclamation of the consti- 
tution, upon which he definitely 
laid it down, and retired to private 
life upon his estate in Auvergne. 



132 tlFE OF 



As a member of the constituent 
assembly, it is not in the detailed 
organization of the government 
which they prepared^ that his spirit 
and co-operation is to be traced. It 
is in the principles which he pro- 
posed and infused into the system. 
As, at the first assembly of nota- 
bles, his voice had been raised for 
the abolition of arbitrary imprison- 
ment, for the extinction of religious 
intolerance*, and for the representa- 
tion of the people, so, in the nation- 
al assembly, besides the declaration 
of rights, which formed the basis 
of the constitution itself, he made 
or supported the motions for the es- 
tablishment of trial by jury, for the 
gradual emancipation of slaves, for 
the freedom of the press, for the 
abolition of all titles of nobility, and 



GENERAL LAFAYETTE. 133 

for the declaration of equality of 
all the citizens, and the suppression 
of all the privileged orders, without 
exception of the princes of the royal 
family. Thus while as a legisla- 
tor he was spreading the principles 
of universal liberty over the whole 
surface of the state, as commander- 
in-chief of the armed force of the 
nation he was controlling, repress- 
ing, and mitigating, as far as it 
could be effected by human power, 
the excesses of the people. 

The constitution was at length 
proclaimed, and the constituent na- 
tional assembly was dissolved. In 
advance of this event, the sublime 
spectacle of the federation was ex- 
hibited on the 14th of July, 1790, 
the first anniversary of the destruc- 
tion of the Bastile. There was an 



134 LIFE OF 

ingenious and fanciful association 
of ideas in the selection of that day. 
The Bastile was a state prison, a 
massive structure, which had stood 
four hundred years, every stone of 
which was saturated with sighs 
and tears, and echoed the groans 
of four centuries of oppression. It 
was the very type and emblem of 
the despotism which had so long 
weighed upon France. Demolish- 
ed from its summit to its founda- 
tion at the first shout of freedom 
from the people, what day could be 
more appropriate than its anniver- 
j sary for the day of solemn conse- 
| cration of the new fabric of govern- 
I ment, founded upon the rights of 
j man ? 

I shall not describe the magnifi- 
I cent and melancholy pageant of 



GENERAL LAFAYETTE. 135 

that day. The religious solemnity 
of the mass was performed by a 
prelate, then eminent among the 
members of the assembly and the 
dignitaries of the land; still emi- 
nent, after surviving the whole 
circle of subsequent revolutions. 
No longer a father of the church, 
but among the most distinguished 
laymen and most celebrated states- 
men of France, his was the voice 
to invoke the blessing of heaven 
upon this new constitution for his 
liberated country; and he and 
Louis the Sixteenth, and Lafayette, 
and thirty thousand delegates from 
all the confederated national guards 
of the kingdom, in the presence of 
Almighty God, and of five hundred 
thousand of their countrymen, took 
the oath of fidelity to the nation, to 



136 LIFE OF 



the constitution, and all, save the 
monarch himself, to the king. His 
corresponding oath was, of fidelity 
to discharge the duties of his high 
office, and to the people. 

Alas ! and was it all false and 
hollow ? had these oaths no more 
substance than the breath that 
ushered them to the winds 1 It is 
impossible to look back upon the 
short and turbulent existence of 
this royal democracy, to mark the 
frequent paroxysms of popular 
frenzy by which it was assailed, 
and the catastrophe by which it 
perished, and to believe that the 
vows of all who swore to support 
it were sincere. But as well might 
the sculptor of a block of marble, 
after exhausting his genius and his 
art in giving it a beautiful human 



GENERAL LAFAYETTE. 137 

form, call God to witness that it 
shall perform all the functions of 
animal life, as the constituent as- 
sembly of France could pledge the 
faith of its members that their royal 
democracy should work as a per- 
manent organized form of govern- 
ment. The declaration of rights 
contained all the principles essen- 
tial to freedom. The frame of go- 
vernment was radically and irre- 
parably defective. The hereditary 
royal executive was itself an incon- 
sistency with the declaration of 
rights. The legislative power, all 
concentrated in a single assembly, 
was an incongruity still more glar- 
ing. These were both departures 
from the system of organization 
which Lafayette had witnessed in 
the American constitutions : neither 



138 LIFE OF 

of them was approved by Lafay- 
ette. In deference to the prevail- 
ing opinions and prejudices of the 
times, he acquiesced in them, and 
he was destined to incur the most 
imminent hazards of his life, and 
to make the sacrifice of all that 
gives value to life itself, in faithful 
adherence to that constitution which 
he had sworn to support. 

Shortly after his resignation, as 
commander-general of the national 
guards, the friends of liberty and 
order presented him as a candidate 
for election as mayor of Paris ; but 
he had a competitor in the person 
of Pethion, more suited to the party, 
pursuing with inexorable rancour the 
abolition of the monarchy and the 
destruction of the king; and, what 
may seem scarcely credible, the 



GENERAL LAFAYETTE. 139 

remnant of the party which still 
adhered to the king, the king him- 
self, and above all, the queen, fa- 
voured the election of the Jacobin, 
Pethion, in preference to that of 
Lafayette. They were, too fatally 
for themselves, successful. 

From the first meeting of the 
legislative assembly, under the 
constitution of 1791, the destruc- 
tion of the king and of the mon- 
archy, and the establishment of a 
republic, by means of the popular 
passions and of popular violence, 
were the deliberate purposes of its 
leading members. The spirit with 
which the revolution had been pur- 
sued, from the time of the destruc- 
tion of the Bastile, had caused the 
emigration of great numbers of the 
nobility and clergy ; and, among 



140 LIFE OF 

them, of the two brothers of Louis 
the Sixteenth, and of several other 
princes of his blood. They had 
applied to all the other great mon- 
archies of Europe for assistance to 
uphold or restore the crumbling 
monarchy of France. The French 
reformers themselves, in the heat 
of their political fanaticism avowed, 
without disguise, the design to re- 
volutionize all Europe, and had 
emissaries in every country, openly 
or secretly preaching the doctrine 
of insurrection against all establish- 
ed governments. Louis the Six- 
teenth, and his queen, an Austrian 
princess, sister to the Emperor 
Leopold, were in secret negotiation 
with the Austrian government for 
the rescue of the king and royal 
family of France from the dangers 



GENERAL LAFAYETTE. 141 

with which they were so incessantly 
beset. In the Electorate of Treves;, 
a part of the Germanic empire, the 
emigrants from France were assent 
bling, with indications of a design 
to enter France in hostile array, to 
effect a counter-revolution ; and 
the brothers of the king, assuming 
a position at Coblentz, on the bor* 
ders of their country, were holding 
councils, the object of which was 
to march in arms to Paris, to re- 
lease the king from captivity, and 
to restore the ancient monarchy to 
the dominion of absolute power. 

The king, who even before his 
forced acceptance of the constitu- 
tion of 1791, had made an unsuc- 
cessful attempt to escape from his 
palace prison, was in April, 1792, 
reduced to the humiliating necessity 



142 LIFE OF 

of declaring war against the very 
sovereigns who were arming their 
nations to rescue him from his re- 
volted subjects. Three armies, each 
of fifty thousand men, were levied 
to meet the emergencies of this 
war, and were placed under the 
command ofLuckner, Rochambeau, 
and Lafayette. As he passed 
through Paris to go and take the 
command of his army, he appeared 
before the legislative assembly, 
the president of which in address- 
ing him, said that the nation would 
oppose to their enemies the consti- 
tution and Lafayette. 

But the enemies to the constitu- 
tion were within the walls. At this 
distance of time, when most of the 
men, and many of the passions of 
those days, have passed away, 



GENERAL LAFAYETTE. i43 

when the French revolution, and 
its results, should be regarded with 
the searching eye of philosophical 
speculation, as lessons of experi- 
ence to after ages, may it even now 
be permitted to remark how much 
the virtues and the crimes of men, 
in times of political convulsion, are 
modified and characterized by the 
circumstances in which they are 
placed. The great actors of the 
tremendous scenes of revolution of 
those times were men educated in 
schools of high civilization, and in 
the humane and benevolent precepts 
of the Christian religion. A small 
portion of them were vicious and 
depraved ; but the great majority 
were wound up to madness by that 
war of conflicting interests and ab- 
sorbing passions, unkindled by a 



144 LIFE OF 



great convulsion of the social sys- 
tem. It has been said, by a great 
master of human nature, — 

a In peace-, there 's nothing so becomesa man 
As modest stillness and humility ; 
But when the blast of war blows in your ears, 
Then imitate the action of the tiger. 5 * 

Too faith fully did the people of 
France, and the leaders of their 
factions, in that war of all the po- 
litical elements, obey that injunction. 
Who, that lived in that day, can 
remember? who, since born, can 
read, or bear to be told, the horrors 
of the 20th of June, the 10th of 
August, the 2d and 3d of Septem- 
ber, 1792, of the 31st of May, 
1793, and of a multitude of others, 
during which, in dreadful succes- 
sion, the murderers of one day 
were the victims of the next, until 
tha^ when the insurgent populace 



GENERAL LAFAYETTE. 145 

themselves were shot down -by 
thousands, in the very streets of 
Paris, by the military legions of the 
convention, and the rising fortune 
and genius of Napoleon Bonaparte? 
Who can remember, or read, or 
hear of all this, without shuddering 
at the sight of man, his fellow- 
creature, in the drunkenness of po- 
litical frenzy, degrading himself 
beneath the condition of the can- 
nibal savage ? beneath even the 
condition of the wild beast of the 
desert ? and who, but with a feeling 
of deep mortification, can reflect, 
that the rational and immortal be- 
ing, to the race of which he him- 
self belongs, should, even in his 
most palmy state of intellectual 
cultivation, be capable of this self- 
transformation to brutality ? 



10 



146 LIFE OF 

In this dissolution of all the 
moral elements which regulate the 
conduct of men in their social condi- 
tion — in this monstrous, and scarce- 
ly conceivable spectacle of a king, 
at the head of a mighty nation, in 
secret league with the enemies 
against whom he has proclaimed 
himself at war, and of a legisla- 
ture conspiring to destroy the king 
and constitution to which they have 
sworn allegiance and support, La- 
fayette alone is seen to preserve his 
fidelity to the king, to the constitu- 
tion, and to his country, 

" Unshaken, unseduced, unterrified, 
His loyalty he kept, his love, his zeal." 

On the 16th of June, 1792, four 
days before the first violation of the 
palace of the Tuilleries by the po- 
pulace of Paris, at the instigation of 



GENERAL LAFAYETTE. 147 

the jacobins, Lafayette, in a letter 
to the legislative assembly, had de- 
nounced the jacobin clubs, and 
called upon the assembly to sup- 
press them. He afterwards re- 
paired to Paris in person, present- 
ed himself at the bar of the assem- 
bly, repeated his denunciation of 
the clubs, and took measures for 
suppressing their meetings by force. 
He proposed also to the king him- 
self to furnish him with means of 
withdrawing with his family to 
Compiegne, where he would have 
been out of the reach of that fero- 
j cious and blood-thirsty multitude. 
The assembly, by a great majority 
of votes, sustained the principles of 
his letter, but the king declined his 
proffered assistance to enable him 
to withdraw from Paris ; and of 



148 LIFE OF 



those upon whom he called to 
march with him, and shut up the 
hall where the jacobins held their 
meetings, not more than thirteen 
persons presented themselves at the 
appointed time. 

He returned to his army, and 
became thenceforth the special ob- 
ject of jacobin resentment and re- 
venge. On the 8th of August, on 
a preliminary measure to the in- 
tended insurrection of the 10th, 
the question was taken, after seve- 
ral days of debate, upon a formal 
motion that he should be put in 
accusation and tried. The last 
remnant of freedom in that assem- 
bly was then seen by the vote upon 
nominal appeal, or yeas and nays, 
in which four hundred and forty- 
six votes were for rejecting the 



GENERAL LAFAYETTE. 149 

charge, and only two hundred and 
twenty-four for sustaining it. Two 
days after, the Tuilleries were 
stormed by popular insurrection. 
The unfortunate king was com- 
pelled to seek refuge, with his 
family, in the hall of the legislative 
assembly, and escaped from being 
torn to pieces by an infuriated mul- 
titude, only to pass from his palace 
to the prison, in his way to the 
scaffold. 

This revolution, thus accom- 
plished, annihilated the constitu- 
tion, the government, and the cause 
for which Lafayette had contended. 
The people of France, by their ac- 
quiescence, a great portion of them 
by direct approval, confirmed and 
sanctioned the abolition of the mon- 
archy. The armies and their 



[50 



commanders took the same victo- 
rious side: not a show of resist- 
ance was made to the revolutionary- 
torrent, not an arm was lifted to 
restore the fallen monarch to his 
throne, nor even to rescue or pro- 
tect his person from the fury of his 
inexorable foes. Lafayette himself 
would have marched to Paris with 
his army for the defence of the 
constitution, but in this disposition 
he was not seconded by his troops. 
After ascertaining that the effort 
would be vain, and after arresting 
at Sedan the members of the depu- 
tation from the legislative assem- 
bly, sent, after their own subjuga- 
tion, to arrest him, he determined, 
as the only expedient left him, to 
save his honour and his principles, 
to withdraw both from the army 



GENERAL LAFAYETTE. 151 

and the country ; to pass into a 
neutral territory, and thence into 
these United States, the country of 
his early adoption and his fond par- 
tiality, where he was sure of finding 
a safe asylum, and of meeting a 
cordial welcome. 

But his destiny had reserved 
him for other and severer trials. 
We have seen him struggling for 
the support of principles, against 
the violence of raging factions, and 
the fickleness of the multitude ; we 
are now to behold him in the hands 
of the hereditary rulers of man- 
kind, and to witness the nature of 
their tender mercies to him. 

It was in the neutral territory of 
Liege that he, together with his 
companions, Latour Maubourg, Bu- 
reau de Puzy, and Alexandre La- 



152 LIFE OF 

meth, was taken by Austrians, and 
transferred to Prussian guards. 
Under the circumstances of the 
case, he could not, by the princi- 
ples of the law of nations, be treat- 
ed even as a prisoner of war. He 
was treated as a prisoner of state. 
Prisoners of state in the monarchies 
of Europe are always presumed 
guilty, and are treated as if entitled 
as little to mercy as to justice. 
Lafayette was immured in dun- 
geons, first at Wesel, then at 
Madgeburg, and finally at Olmutz, 
in Moravia. By what right 1 By 
none known among men. By 
what authority ? That has never 
been avowed. For what cause? 
None has ever been assigned. 
Taken by Austrian soldiers upon 
a neutral territory, handed over to 



GENERAL LAFAYETTE. 155 

Prussian jailors ; and, when Fred- 
erick William of Prussia abandon- 
ed his Austrian ally, and made his 
separate peace with republican 
France, he transferred his illustri- 
ous prisoner to the Austrians, from 
whom he had received him, that 
he might be deprived of the bless- 
ing of regaining his liberty, even 
from the hands of peace. Five 
years was the duration of this im- 
prisonment, aggravated by every 
indignity that could make oppres- 
sion bitter. That it was intended 
as imprisonment for life, was not 
only freely avowed, but significant- 
ly made known to him by his jail- 
ors ; and while, with affected pre- 
caution, the means of terminating 
his sufferings by his own act were 
removed from him, the barbarity 



156 LIFE OF 

of ill-usage, of unwholesome food, 
and of a pestiferous atmosphere, 
was applied with inexorable rigour, 
as if to abridge the days which, at 
the same time, were rendered as 
far as possible insupportable to 
himself. 

Neither the generous sympathies 
of the gallant soldier, General Fitz- 
patrick, in the British House of 
Commons, nor the personal solicita- 
tion of Washington, President of 
the United States, speaking with 
the voice of a grateful nation, nor 
the persuasive accents of domestic 
and conjugal affection, imploring 
the monarch of Austria for the re- 
lease of Lafayette, could avail. The 
unsophisticated feeling of generous 
nature in the hearts of men, at this 
outrage upon justice and humanity, 



GENERAL LAFAYETTE. 157 

was manifested in another form. 
Two individuals, private citizens 
one of the United States of Amerl 
ca, Francis Huger, the other a na 
tive of the Electorate of Hanover 
Doctor Erick Bollmann, undertook 
at the imminent hazard of their 
lives, to supply means for his es 
cape from prison, and their per 
sonal aid to its accomplishment 
Their design was formed with Great 
address, pursued with untiring per 
severance, and executed with un 
daunted intrepidity. It was frus- 
trated by accidents beyond the 
control of human sagacity. 

To his persecutions, however, the 
hand of a wise and just Providence 
had, in its own time, and in its own 
way, prepared a termination. The 
hands of the Emperor Francis, tied 
1 



158 LIFE OF 



by mysterious and invisible bands 
against the indulgence of mercy to 
the tears of a more than heroic 
wife, were loosened by the more 
prevailing eloquence, or rather were 
severed by the conquering sword 
of Napoleon Bonaparte, acting un- 
der instructions from the executive 
directory, then swaying the desti- 
nies of France. 

Lafayette and his fellow-sufferers 
were still under the sentence of pro- 
scription issued by the faction 
which had destroyed the constitu- 
tion of 1791 , and murdered the ill- 
fated Louis and his queen. But 
revolution had followed upon revo- 
lution since the downfall of the 
monarchy, on the 10th of August, 
1792. The federative republicans 
of the Gironde had been butchered 



GENERAL LAFAYETTE. 159 

by the jacobin republicans of the 
mountain. The mountain had been 
subjugated by the municipality of 
Paris, and the sections of Paris, by a 
reorganization of parties in the na- 
tional convention, and with aid from 
the armies. Brissot and his federal 
associates, Danton and his party, 
Robespierre and his subaltern de- 
mons, had successively perished, 
each by the measure applied to 
themselves which they had meted 
out to others ; and as no experiment 
of political empiricism was to be 
omitted in the medley of the French 
revolutions, the hereditary execu- 
tive, with a single legislative as- 
sembly, was succeeded by a consti- 
tution with a legislature in two 
branches, and a five-headed execu- 
tive, eligible, annually one-fifth, by 



160 LIFE OF 

their concurrent votes, and bearing 
the name of a directory. This 
was the government at whose in- 
stance Lafayette was finally libera- 
ted from the dungeon of Olmutz. 

But, while this directory were 
shaking to their deepest foundations 
all the monarchies of Europe ; while 
they were stripping Austria, the 
most potent of mem all, piecemeal 
of her territories ; while they were 
imposing upon her the most hu- 
miliating conditions of peace, and 
bursting open her dungeons to re- 
store their illustrious countrymen 
to the light of day and the blessing 
of personal freedom, they were 
themselves exploding by internal 
combustion, divided into two fac- 
tions, each conspiring the destruc- 
tion of the other. Lafayette re- 



GENERAL LAFAYETTE. 161 

ceived his freedom, only to see the 
two members of the directory, who 
had taken the warmest interest in 
effecting his liberation, outlawed 
and proscribed by their colleagues : 
one of them, Carnot, a fugitive from 
his country, lurking in banishment 
to escape pursuit; and the other, 
Barthelemy, deported with fifty 
members of the legislative assem- 
bly$ without form of trial or even 
of legal process, to the pestilential 
climate of Guiana. All this was 
done with the approbation, express- 
ed in the most unqualified terms, 
of Napoleon, and with co-operation 
of his army. Upon being informed 
of the success of this Pride's purge, 
he wrote to the directory that he 
had with him one hundred thou- 
sand men, upon whom they might 



11 



162 LIFE OF 

rely to cause to be respected, all 
the measures that they should take 
to establish liberty upon solid foun- 
dations. 

Two years afterwards, another 
revolution, directly accomplished 
by Napoleon himself, demolished 
the directory, the constitution of 
the two councils, and the solid 
liberty, to the support of which the 
hundred thousand men had been 
pledged, and introduced another 
constitution, with Bonaparte him- 
self for its executive head, as the 
first of three consuls, for five years. 

In the interval between these 
two revolutions, Lafayette resided 
for about two years, first in the 
Danish territory of Holstein, and 
afterwards at Utrecht, in the Bata- 
vian republic. Neither of them 



GENERAL LAFAYETTE. 163 



had been effected by means or in a 
manner which could possibly meet 
his approbation. But the consular 
government commenced with broad 
professions of republican principles, 
on the faith of which he returned 
to France, and for a series of years 
resided in privacy and retirement 
upon his estate of La Grange. 
Here, in the cultivation of his 
farm, and the enjoyment of do- 
mestic felicity, embittered only by 
the loss, in 1807, of that angel 
upon earth, the partner of all the 
vicissitudes of his life, he employed 
his time, and witnessed the up- 
ward flight and downward fall of 
the soldier and sport of fortune, 
Napoleon Bonaparte. He had soon 
perceived the hollowness of the 
consular professions of pure repub- 



164 LIFE OF 

lican principles, and withheld him- 
self from all participation in the 
government. In 1802, he was 
elected a member of the general 
council of the department of Upper 
Loire, and in declining the ap- 
pointment, took occasion to present 
a review of his preceding life, and I 
a pledge of his perseverance in the 
principles which he had previously 
sustained. " Far," said he, "from 
the scene of public affairs, and de- 
voting myself at last to the repose 
of private life, my ardent wishes 
are, that external peace should 
soon prove the fruit of those mira- 
cles of glory which are even now 
surpassing the prodigies of the 
preceding campaigns, and that in- 
ternal peace should be consolidated 
upon the essential and invariable 



GENERAL LAFAYETTE. 165 

foundations of true liberty. Hap- 
py that twenty-three years of vicis- 
situdes in my fortune, and of con- 
stancy to my principles, authorize 
me to repeat, that if a nation, to 
recover its rights, needs only the 
will, they can only be preserved 
by inflexible fidelity to its obliga- 
tions." 

When the first consulate for five 
years was invented as one of the 
steps of the ladder of Napoleon's 
ambition, he suffered Sieyes, the 
member of the directory whom he 
had used as an instrument for cast- 
ing off that worse than worthless 
institution, to prepare another con- 
stitution, of which he took as much 
as suited his purpose, and consigned 
the rest to oblivion. One of the 
wheels of this new political engine 



166 LIFE OF 



was a conservative senate, forming 
the peerage to sustain the executive 
head. This body it was the interest 
and policy of Napoleon to concili- 
ate, and he filled it with men, who, 
through all the previous stages of 
the revolution, had acquired and 
maintained the highest respecta- 
bility of character. Lafayette was 
urged with great earnestness, by 
Napoleon himself, to take a seat in 
this senate ; but, after several con- 
ferences with the first consul, in 
which he ascertained the extent of 
his designs, he peremptorily de- 
clined. His answer to the minister 
of war tempered his refusal with a 
generous and delicate compliment, 
alluding at the same time to the 
position which the consistency of 
his character made it his duty to 



GENERAL LAFAYETTE. 167 

occupy. To the first consul him- 
self, in terms equally candid and 
explicit, he said, " that from the di- 
rection which public affairs were 
taking, what he already saw, and 
what it was easy to foresee, it did 
not seem suitable to his character 
to enter into an order of things con- 
trary to his principles, and in which 
he would have to contend without 
success, as without public utility, 
against a man to whom he was in- 
debted for great obligations." 

Not long afterwards, when all 
republican principle was so utterly 
prostrated that he was summoned 
to vote on the question whether the 
citizen Napoleon Bonaparte should 
be consul for life, Lafayette added 
to his vote the following comment : 
" I cannot vote for such a magis- 



168 LIFE OF 

tracy until the public liberty shall 
have been sufficiently guarantied ; 
and in that event I'vote for Napo- 
leon Bonaparte." 

He wrote at the same time to the 
first consul a letter explanatory of 
his vote, which no republican will 
now read without recognising the 
image of inordinate and triumphant 
ambition cowering under the rebuke 
of disinterested virtue. 

"The 18th of Brumaire, (said 
this letter,) saved France ; and I 
felt myself recalled by the liberal 
professions to which you had at- 
tached your honour. Since then, we 
have seen in the consular power that 
reparatory dictatorship which, under 
the auspices of your genius, has 
achieved so much ; yet not so much 
as will be the restoration of liberty . 



GENERAL LAFAYETTE. 169 

It is impossible that you, general, 
the first of that order of men who, 
to compare and seat themselves, 
take in the compass of all ages, 
that you should wish such a revo- 
lution — so many victories, so much 
blood, so many calamities and pro- 
digies, should have for the world 
and for you no other result than an 
arbitrary government. The French 
people have too well known their 
rights ultimately to forget them ; 
but perhaps they are now better 
prepared, than in the time of their 
effervescence, to recover them use- 
fully ; and you, by the force of 
your character, and of the public 
confidence, by the superiority of 
your talents, of your position, of 
your fortune, may, by the re-estab- 
lishment of liberty, surmount every 



170 LIFE OF 



danger, and relieve every anxiety. 
I have, then, no other than patri- 
otic and personal motives for wish- 
ing you this last addition to your 
glory — a permanent magistracy ; 
but it is due to the principles, the en- 
gagements, and the actions of my 
whole life, to wait, before giving 
my vote, until liberty shall have 
been settled upon foundations worthy 
of the nation and of you. I hope, 
general, that you will here find, as 
heretofore, that with the perse- 
verance of my political opinions 
are united sincere good wishes per- 
sonally to you, and a profound 
sentiment of my obligations to 
you." 

The writer of this letter, and he 
to whom it was addressed, have, 
each in his appropriate sphere, been 



GENERAL LAFAYETTE. 171 

instruments of transcendent power, 
in the hands of Providence, to 
shape the ends of its wisdom in the 
wonderful story of the French re- 
volution. In contemplating the part 
which each of them had acted up- 
on that great theatre of human 
destiny, before the date of the letter, 
how strange was at that moment 
the relative position of the two in- 
dividuals to each other, and to the 
world ! Lafayette was the founder 
of the great movement then in pro- 
gress for the establishment of free- 
dom in France, and in the Euro- 
pean world ; but his agency had 
been all intellectual and moral. He 
had asserted and proclaimed the 
principles. He had never violated, 
never betrayed them. Napoleon, 
a military adventurer, had vapoured 



172 LIFE OF 

in proclamations, and had the froth 
of jacobinism upon his lips ; but 
his soul was at the point of his 
sword. The revolution was to La- 
fayette the cause of human kind ; 
to Napoleon it was a mere ladder of 
ambition. 

Yet, at the time when this letter 
was written, Lafayette, after a se- 
ries of immense sacrifices and un- 
paralleled sufferings, was a private 
citizen, called to account to the 
world for declining to vote for pla- 
cing Napoleon at the head of the 
French nation, with arbitrary and 
indefinite power for life ; and Na- 
poleon, amid professions of un- 
bounded devotion to liberty, was, in 
the face of mankind, ascending the 
steps of an hereditary imperial and 
royal throne. Such was their re- 



GENERAL LAFAYETTE. 173 

lative position then; what is it 
now ? Has history a lesson for 
mankind more instructive than the 
contrast and the parallel of their 
fortunes and their fate 1 Time and 
chance, and the finger of Provi- 
dence, which, in every deviation 
from the path of justice, reserves 
or opens to itself an avenue of re- 
turn, has brought each of these 
mighty men to a close of life, con- 
genial to the character with which 
he travelled over its scenes. The 
consul for life, the hereditary em- 
peror and king, expires a captive 
on a barren rock in the wilderness 
of a distant ocean — separated from 
his imperial wife — separated from 
his son, who survives him only to 
pine away his existence, and die at 
the moment of manhood, in the 



174 LIFE OF 

condition of an Austrian prince. 
The apostle of liberty survives, 
again to come forward, the ever- 
consistent champion of her cause, 
and finally to close his career in 
peace, a republican, without re- 
proach in death, as he had been 
without fear throughout life. 

But Napoleon was to be the arti- 
ficer of his own fortunes, prosper- 
ous and adverse. He was rising 
by the sword ; by the sword he was 
destined to fall. The counsels of 
wisdom and of vjrtue fell forceless 
upon his ear, or sunk into his heart 
only to kindle resentment and hatred. 
He sought no further personal inter- 
course with Lafayette ; and denied 
common justice to his son, who had 
entered and distinguished himself 
in the army of Italy, and from 



GENERAL LAEAYETTE. 175 

whom he withheld the promotion 
justly due to his services. 

The career of glory, of fame, 
and of power, of which the consu- 
late for life was but the first step, 
was of ten years' continuance, till 
it had reached its zenith ; till the 
astonished eyes of mankind beheld 
the charity scholar of Brienne, 
emperor, king, and protector of the 
confederation of the Rhine, ban- 
queting at Dresden, surrounded by 
a circle of tributary crowned heads, 
among whom was seen that very 
Francis of Austria, the keeper, in 
his castle of Olmutz, of the re- 
publican Lafayette. And upon that 
day of the banqueting at Dresden, 
the star of Napoleon culminated 
from the equator. Thenceforward 
it was to descend with motion far 



176 LIFE OF 

more rapid than when rising, till it 
sunk in endless night. Through 
that long period, Lafayette remain- 
ed in retirement at La Grange. 
Silent amidst the deafening shouts 
of victory from Marengo, and Jena, 
and Austerlitz, and Friedland, and 
Wagram, and Borodino — silent at 
the conflagration of Moscow; at 
the passage of the Beresina ; at the 
irretrievable discomfiture of Leipzic; 
at the capitulation at the gates of 
Paris, and at the first restoration of 
the Bourbons, under the auspices 
of the inveterate enemies of France 
— as little could Lafayette partici- 
pate in the measures of that resto- 
ration, as in the usurpations of 
Napoleon. Louis the Eighteenth 
was quartered upon the French 
nation as the soldiers of the victo- 



GENERAL LAFAYETTE. 177 

rious armies were quartered upon 
the inhabitants of Paris. Yet Louis 
the Eighteenth, who held his crown 
as the gift of the conquerors of 
France, the most humiliating of the 
conditions imposed upon the van- 
quished nation, affected to hold it 
by divine right, and to grant, as a 
special favour, a charter, or con- 
stitution, founded on the avowed 
principle that all the liberties of the 
nation were no more than gratuitous 
donations of the king. 

These pretensions, with a cor- 
responding course of policy pursued 
by the reinstated government of the 
Bourbons, and the disregard of the 
national feelings and interests of 
France, with which Europe was 
remodelled at the Congress of 
Vienna, opened the way for the re- 

12 



178 LIFE OF 

turn of Napoleon from Elba, with- 
in a year from the time when he 
had been relegated there. He 
landed as a solitary adventurer, 
and the nation rallied around him 
with rapture. He came with pro- 
mises to the nation of freedom as 
well as of independence. The 
allies of Vienna proclaimed against 
him a war of extermination, and 
re-invaded France with armies ex- 
ceeding in numbers a million of 
men. Lafayette had been courted 
by Napoleon upon his return. He 
was again urged to take his seat in 
the House of Peers, but perempto- 
rily declined, from aversion to its 
hereditary character. He had re- 
fused to resume his title of nobility, 
and protested against the constitu- 
tion of the empire, and the additional 



GENERAL LAFAYETTE. 179 

act entailing the imperial hereditary 
crown upon the family of Napoleon. 
But he offered himself as a candi- 
date for election as a member of 
the popular representative chamber 
of the legislature, and was unani- 
mously chosen by the electoral 
college of his department to that 
station. 

The battle of Waterloo was the 
last desperate struggle of Napoleon 
to recover his fallen fortunes, and 
its issue fixed his destiny for ever. 
He escaped almost alone from the 
field, and returned a fugitive to 
Paris, projecting to dissolve by 
armed force the legislative assem- 
bly, and, assuming a dictatorial 
power, to levy a new army, and 
try the desperate chances of another 
battle. This purpose was defeated 



180 LIFE OF 



by the energy and promptitude of 
Lafayette. At his instance the 
Assembly adopted three resolutions, 
one of which declared them in per- 
manent session, and denounced 
any attempt to dissolve them as a 
crime of high treason. 

After a feeble and fruitless at- 
tempt of Napoleon- through his 
brother Lucien, to obtain from the 
Assembly itself a temporary dicta- 
torial power, he abdicated the Im- 
perial Crown in favour of his infant 
son; but his abdication could not 
relieve France from the deplorable 
condition to which he had reduced 
her. France, from the day of the 
battle of Waterloo, was at the mer- 
cy of the allied monarchs ; and, as 
the last act of their revenge, they 
gave her again the Bourbons. 



GENERAL LAFAYETTE. 181 

France was constrained to receive 
them. It was at the point of the 
bayonet, and resistance was of no 
avail. The legislative assembly 
appointed a provisional council of 
government, and commissioners, of 
whom Lafayette was one, to nego- 
tiate with the allied armies then 
rapidly advancing upon Paris. 

The allies manifested no disposi- 
tion to negotiate. They closed the 
doors of their hall upon the repre- 
sentatives of the people of France. 
They reseated Louis the Eighteenth 
upon his throne. Against these 
measures Lafayette and the mem- 
bers of the assembly had no means 
of resistance left, save a fearless 
protest, to be remembered when the 
day of freedom should return. 

From the time of this second re- 



182 LIFE OF 

storation until his death, Lafayette, 
who had declined accepting a seat 
in the hereditary chamber of peers, 
and inflexibly refused to resume his 
title of nobility, though the charter 
of Louis the Eighteenth had re- 
stored them all , was almost constant- 
ly a member of the chamber of 
deputies, the popular branch of the 
legislature. More than once, how- 
ever, the influence of the court was 
successful in defeating his election. 
At one of these intervals, he em- 
ployed the leisure afforded him in 
revisiting the United States. 

Forty years had elapsed since 
he had visited and taken leave of 
them, at the close of the revolution- 
ary war. The greater part of the 
generation for and with whom he 
had fought his first fields, had pass- 



GENERAL LAFAYETTE. 183 

ed away. Of the two millions of 
souls to whose rescue from oppres- 
sion he had crossed the ocean in 
1777, not one in ten survived. But 
their places were supplied by more 
than five times their numbers, their 
descendants and successors. The 
sentiment of gratitude and affection 
for Lafayette, far from declining 
with the lapse of time, quickened 
in spirit as it advanced in years, 
and seemed to multiply with the in- 
creasing numbers of the people. 
The nation had never ceased to 
sympathize with his fortunes, and 
in every vicissitude of his life had 
manifested the deepest interest in 
his welfare. He had occasionally 
expressed his intention to visit once 
more the scene of his early achieve- 
ments, and the country which 



184 LIFE OF 



had requited his services by a 
just estimate of their value. In 
February, 1824, a solemn legisla- 
tive act, unanimously passed by 
both houses of Congress, and ap- 
proved by the President of the Uni- 
ted States, charged the chief magis- 
trate of the nation with the duty of 
communicating to him the assuran- 
ces of grateful and affectionate at- 
tachment still cherished for him by 
the government and people of the 
United States, and of tendering to 
him a national ship, with suitable 
accommodation, for his conveyance 
to this country. 

Ten years have passed away 
since the occurrence of that event. 
Since then, the increase of popula- 
tion within the borders of our 
Union exceeds, in numbers, the 



GENERAL LAFAYETTE. 185 

whole mass of that infant commu- 
nity to whose liberties he had de- 
voted, in early youth, his life and 
fortune. His companions and fel- 
low-soldiers of the war of indepen- 
dence, of whom a scanty remnant 
still existed to join in the universal 
shout of welcome with which he 
landed upon our shores, have been 
since, in the ordinary course of na- 
ture, dropping away : pass but a 
few short years more, and not an 
individual of that generation with 
which he toiled and bled in the 
cause of human kind, upon his first 
appearance on the field of human 
action, will be left. The gallant 
officer, and distinguished represen- 
tative of the people, at whose mo- 
tion, upon this floor, the invitation 
of the nation was given — the chief 



186 LIFE OF 

magistrate by whom, in compliance 
with the will of the legislature, it 
was tendered — the surviving Presi- 
dents of the United States, and their 
venerable compeer signers of the 
Declaration of Independence, who 
received him to the arms of private 
friendship, while mingling their 
voices in the chorus of public ex- 
ultation and joy, are no longer here 
to shed the tear of sorrow upon his 
departure from this earthly scene. 
They all preceded him in the trans- 
lation to another, and, we trust, a 
happier world. The active, ener- 
getic manhood of the nation, of 
whose infancy he had been the pro- 
tector and benefactor, and who, by 
the protracted festivities of more 
than a year of jubilee, manifested 
to him their sense of the obligations 



GENERAL LAFAYETTE. 187 

for which they were indebted to 
him, are already descending, into 
the vale of years. The children of 
the public schools, who thronged 
in double files to pass in review be- 
fore him to catch a glimpse of his 
countenance, and a smile from his 
eye, are now among the men and 
women of the land, rearing another 
generation to envy their parents the 
joy which they can never share, of 
having seen and contributed to the 
glorious and triumphant reception 
of Lafayette. 

Upon his return to France, Lafa- 
yette was received w r ith a welcome 
by his countrymen scarcely less 
enthusiastic than that with which he 
had been greeted in this country. 
From his landing at Havre, till his 
arrival at his residence at La 



188 LIFE OF 

Grange, it was again one triumphal ! 
march, rendered but the more stri- j 
king by the interruptions and ob- ; 
stacles of an envious and jealous j 
government. Threats were not : 
even spared of arresting him as a i 
criminal, and holding him responsi- I 
ble for the spontaneous and irre- | 
pressible feelings manifested by the 
people in his favour. He was, very 
soon after his return, again elected 
a member of the chamber of depu- 
ties, and thenceforward, in that 
honourable and independent station, 
was the soul of that steadfast and 
inflexible party, which never ceased 
to defend, and was ultimately des- 
tined to vindicate the liberties of 
France. 

The government of the Bourbons, 
from the time of their restoration, 



GENERAL LAFAYETTE. 189 

was a perpetual struggle to return 
to the saturnian times of absolute 
power. For them the sun and 
moon had stood still, not, as in the 
miracle of ancient story, for about 
a whole day, but for more than a 
whole century. Reseated upon 
their thrones, not, as the Stuarts 
had been in the seventeenth cen- 
tury, by the voluntary act of the 
same people which had expelled 
them, but by the arms of foreign 
kings and hostile armies, instead of 
aiming, by the liberality of their 
government, and by improving the 
condition of their people, to make 
them forget the humiliation of the 
yoke imposed upon them, they la- 
boured with unyielding tenacity to 
make it more galling. They dis- 
armed the national guards ; they 



190 LIFE OF 

cramped and crippled the right of 
suffrage in elections ; they pervert- 
ed and travestied the institution of 
juries ; they fettered the freedom of 
the press, and in their external po- 
licy lent themselves willing instru- 
ments to crush the liberties of Spain 
and Italy. The spirit of the nation 
was curbed, but not subdued. The 
principles of freedom proclaimed in 
the Declaration of Rights of 1789, 
had taken too deep root to be ex- 
tirpated. Charles the Tenth, by a 
gradual introduction into his coun- 
cils of the most inveterate adherents 
to the anti-revolutionary govern- 
ment, was preparing the way for 
the annihilation of the charter and 
of the legislative representation of 
the people. In proportion as this 
plan approached to its maturity, the 



GENERAL LAFAYETTE. 191 

resistance of the nation to its ac- 
complishment acquired consistency 
and organization. The time had 
been, when, by the restrictions 
upon the right of suffrage, and the 
control of the press, and even of 
the freedom of debate in the legis- 
lature, the opposition in the cham- 
ber of deputies had dwindled down^ 
to not more than thirty members. 
But, under a rapid succession of 
incompetent and unpopular admin- 
istrations, the majority of the house 
of deputies had passed from the 
side of the court to that of the peo- 
ple. 

In August, 1829, the king, con- 
fiding in his imaginary strength, 
reorganized his ministry by the 
•appointment of men whose reputa- 
tion was itself a pledge of the vio- 



192 



'1 



lent and desperate designs in con- 
templation. At the first meeting 
of the legislative assembly, an ad- 
dress to the king, signed by two 
hundred and twenty-one out of four 
hundred members, declared to him, 
in respectful terms, that a concur- 
rence of sentiments between his 
ministers and the nation was indis- 
pensable to the happiness of the 
people under his government, and 
that this concurrence did not exist. 
He replied that his determination 
was immoveable, and dissolved the 
assembly. A new election was 
held; and so odious throughout 
the nation were the measures of 
the court, that, of the two hundred 
and twenty-one members who had 
signed the address against the 
ministers, more than two hundred 



GENERAL LAFAYETTE. 193 

were re-elected. The opposition 
had also gained an accession of 
numbers in the remaining part of 
the deputations, and it was appa- 
rent that, upon the meeting of the 
assembly, the court party could 
not be sustained. 

At this crisis, Charles the Tenth, 
as if resolved to leave himself not 
the shadow of a pretext to complain 
of his expulsion from the throne, in 
defiance of the charter, to the ob- 
servance of which he had solemnly 
sworn, issued at one and the same 
time, four ordinances — the first of 
which suspended the liberty of the 
press, and prohibited the publication 
of all the daily newspapers and 
other periodical journals, but by 
license, revocable at pleasure, and 
renewable every three months ; the 



13 



194 LIFE OF 



second annulled the election of 
deputies, which had just taken 
place ; the third changed the mode 
of election prescribed by law, and 
reduced nearly by one half the 
numbers of the house of deputies 
to be elected ; and the fourth com- 
manded the new elections to be 
held, and fixed a day for the meet- 
ing of the assembly to be so con- 
stituted. 

These ordinances were the im- 
mediate occasion of the last revo- 
lution of the three days, terminat- 
ing in the final expulsion of Charles 
the Tenth from the throne, and 
of himself and his family from the 
territory of France. This was 
effected by an insurrection of the 
people of Paris, which ^urst forth 
by spontaneous and unpremedi- 



GENERAL LAFAYETTE. 195 

tated movement, on the very day 
of the promulgation of the four 
ordinances. The first of these, the 
suppression of all the daily news- 
papers, seemed as if studiously de- 
vised to provoke instantaneous 
resistance, and the conflict of 
physical force. Had Charles the 
Tenth issued a decree to shut up 
all the bakehouses of Paris, it 
could not have been more fatal to 
his authority. The conductors of 
the proscribed journals, by mutual 
engagement among themselves, de- 
termined to consider the ordinance 
as unlawful, null and void; and 
this was to all classes of the peo- 
ple the signal of resistance. The 
publishers of two of the journals, 
summoned immediately before the 
judicial tribunal, were justified in 



196 LIFE OF 



their resistance by the sentence of 
the court, pronouncing the ordi^- 
nance null and void. A marshal 
of France receives the commands 
of the king to disperse by force of 
arms the population of Paris ; but 
the spontaneous resurrection of the 
national guard organizes at once 
an army to defend the liberties of 
the nation. Lafayette is again 
called from his retreat at La 
Grange* and by the unanimous 
voice of the people, confirmed by 
such deputies of the legislative as- 
sembly as were able to meet for 
common consultation at that trying 
emergency, is again placed at the 
head of the national guard as their 
commander-in-chief. He assumed 
the command on the second day of 
the conflict, and on the third Charles 



GENERAL LAFAYETTE. 197 

the Tenth had ceased to reign. He 
formally abdicated the crown, and 
his son, the Duke d'Angouleme, 
renounced his pretensions to the 
succession. But, humble imitators 
of Napoleon, even in submitting to 
their own degradation, they clung 
to the last gasp of hereditary sway, 
by transmitting all their claim of 
dominion to the orphan child of the 
Duke de Berri. 

At an early stage of the revolu- 
tion of 1789, Lafayette had declared 
it as a principle that insurrection 
against tyrants was the most sacred 
of duties. He had borrowed this 
sentiment perhaps from the motto 
of Jefferson — " Rebellion to tyrants 
is obedience to God." The prin- 
ciple itself is as sound as its enun- 
ciation is daring. Like all general 



198 LIFE OF 

maxims, it is susceptible of very- 
dangerous abuses : the test of its 
truth is exclusively in the correct- 
ness of its application. As forming 
a part of the political creed of La- 
fayette, it has been severely criti- 
cised ; nor can it be denied that in 
the experience of the French revo- 
lutions, the cases in which popular 
insurrection has been resorted to, 
for the extinction of existing au- 
thority, have been so frequent, so 
unjustifiable in their causes, so 
atrocious in their execution, so de- 
structive to liberty in their conse- 
quences, that the friends of freedom, 
who know that she can exist only 
under the supremacy of the law, 
have sometimes felt themselves 
constrained to shrink from the de- 
velopement of abstract truth, in the 



= 



GENERAL LAFAYETTE. 199 

dread of the danger with which 
she is surrounded. 

In the revolution of the three 
days of 1830, it was the steady, 
calm, but inflexible adherence of 
Lafayette to this maxim which de- 
cided the fate of the Bourbons. 
After the struggles of the people 
had commenced, and even while 
liberty or power were grappling 
with each other for life or death, 
the deputies elect to the Legislative 
Assembly, then at Paris, held seve- 
ral meetings at the house of their 
colleague, Lafitte, and elsewhere, at 
which the question of resistance 
against the ordinances was warmly 
debated, and aversion to that resist- 
ance by force was the sentiment 
predominant in the minds of a 
majority of the members. The 



200 LIFE OF 



hearts of some of the most ardent 
patriots quailed within them at the 
thought of another overthrow of 
the monarchy. All the horrible 
recollections of the reign of terror, 
the massacre of the prisons in 
September, the butcheries of the 
guillotine from year to year, the 
headless trunks of Brissot, and 
Danton, and Robespierre, and last, 
not least, the iron crown and sceptre 
of Napoleon himself, rose in hide- 
ous succession before them, and 
haunted their imaginations. They 
detested the ordinances, but hoped 
that by negotiation and remon- 
strance with the recreant king, it 
might yet be possible to obtain the 
revocation of them, and the sub- 
stitution of a more liberal ministry. 
This deliberation was not concluded 



GENERAL LAFAYETTE. 201 

till Lafayette appeared among them. 
From that moment the die was 
cast. They had till then no mili- 
tary leader. Louis Philippe, of 
Orleans, had not then been seen 
among them. 

In all the changes of government 
in France, from the first assembly 
of notables to that day, there never 
had been an act of authority pre- 
senting a case for the fair and just 
application of the duty of resist- 
ance against oppression, so clear, 
so unquestionable, so flagrant as 
this. The violations of the charter 
were so gross and palpable, that 
the most determined royalist could 
not deny them. The mask had 
been laid aside. The sword of 
despotism had been drawn, and the 
scabbard cast away. A king openly 



202 LIFE OF 

forsworn, had forfeited every claim 
to allegiance ; and the only resource 
of the nation against him was re- 
sistance by force. This was the 
opinion of Lafayette, and he de- 
clared himself ready to take com- 
mand of the national guard, should 
the wish of the people, already 
declared thus to place him at the 
head of this spontaneous movement, 
be confirmed by his colleagues of 
the Legislative Assembly. The ap- 
pointment was accordingly con- 
ferred upon him, and the second 
day afterwards Charles the Tenth 
and his family were fugitives to a 
foreign land. 

France was without a govern- 
ment. She might then have con- 
stituted herself a republic ; and 
such was, undoubtedly, the aspira- 



GENERAL LAFAYETTE. 203 

tion of a very large portion of her 
population. But with another, and 
yet larger portion of her people, 
the name of republic was identified 
with the memory of Robespierre. 
It was held in execration ; there 
was imminent danger, if not abso- 
lute certainty, that the attempt to 
organize a republic would have 
been the signal for a new civil war. 
The name of a republic, too, was 
hateful to all the neighbours of 
France ; to the confederacy of em- 
perors and kings, which had twice 
replaced the Bourbons upon the 
throne, and who might be propitiated 
under the disappointment and mor- 
tification of the result, by the re- 
tention of the name of king, and 
the substitution of the semblance of 
a Bourbon, for the reality. 



204 LIFE OF 

The people of France, like the 
Cardinal de Retz, more than two 
centuries before, wanted a descend- 
ant from Henry the Fourth, who 
could speak the language of the 
Parisian populace, and who had 
known what it was to be a plebeian. 
They found him in the person of 
Louis Philippe, of Orleans. La- 
fayette himself was compelled to 
compromise with his principles, 
purely and simply republican, and 
to accept him, first as lieutenant- 
general of the kingdom, and then 
as hereditary king. There was, 
perhaps, in this determination, be- 
sides the motives which operated 
upon others, a consideration of dis- 
interested delicacy, which could be 
applicable only to himself. If the 
republic should be proclaimed, he 



General Lafayette. 205 

knew that the chief magistracy 
could be delegated only to himself. 
It mast have been a chief magis- 
tracy for life, which, at his age, 
could only have been for a short 
term of years. Independent of the 
extreme dangers and difficulties to 
himself, to his family, and to his 
country, in which the position 
which he would have occupied 
might have involved them, the 
inquiry could not escape his 
forecast, who, upon his demise, 
could be his successor ? and what 
must be the position occupied by 
him 1 If, at that moment, he had 
but spoken the word, he might 
have closed his career with a 
crown upon his head, and with a 
withering blast upon his name to 
the end of time. 



206 LIFE OF 



With the Duke of Orleans him- 
self, he used no concealment or 
disguise. When the crown was 
ofFered to that prince, and he look- 
ed to Lafayette for consultation, 
" You know,'' said he, " that I am 
of the American school, and par- 
tial to the constitution of the United 
States." So, it seems, was Louis 
Philippe. " I think with you," said 
he. " It is impossible to pass two 
years in the United States, without 
being convinced that their govern- 
ment is the best in the world. But 
do you think it suited to our pre- 
sent circumstances and condition ?" 
" No," replied Lafayette. " They 
require a monarchy surrounded by 
popular institutions." So thought, 
also, Louis Philippe ; and he ac- 
cepted the crown uftder the condi- 



GENERAL LAFAYETTE. 207 

tions upon which it was tendered 
to him. 

Lafayette retained the command 
of the national guard so long as it 
was essential to the settlement of 
the new order of things, on the 
basis of order and of freedom ; so 
long as it was essential to control 
the stormy and excited passions of 
the Parisian people; so long as 
was necessary to save the minis- 
ters of the guilty but fallen mon- 
arch from the rash and revengeful 
resentments of their conquerors. 
When this was accomplished, and 
the people had been preserved from 
the calamity of shedding in peace 
the blood of war, he once more 
resigned his command, retired in 
privacy to La Grange, and resumed 
his post as a deputy in the Legisla- 



208 LIFE OF LAFAYETTE. 



tive Assembly, which he continued 
to hold till the close of life. 

His station there was still at the 
head of the phalanx, supporters of 
liberal principles and of constitu- 
tional freedom. In Spain, in Por- 
tugal, in Italy, and above all, in 
Poland, the cause of liberty has 
been struggling against the hand 
of power, and, to the last hour of 
his life, they found in Lafayette a 
never-failing friend and patron. 



THE END. 



GENERAL KOSCIUSKO. 



u 



LIFE OF 
GENERAL KOSCIUSKO. 



Thaddeus Kosciusko was born 
in Poland, about the year 1752. 
Descended from a family, at once 
noble and poor, from his earliest 
youth he was dedicated to the pro- 
fession of arms. Being according- 
ly sent to Warsaw, at a precocious 
age he made rapid advances in. the 
study of the art of war, and early 
obtained a commission in the service 
of " The King and Republic of 
Poland" as it was then called. 

In the course of a few years 



214 LIFE OF 

more, we find this young officer in 
France, whither he had repaired for 
the purpose of further military in- 
struction ; and, on his return to his 
native country, he was immediately 
advanced to a higher rank in the 
Polish army, having found means 
to obtain the protection, not only of 
the king, but also of one of the 
chief nobles, who maintained a 
powerful ascendency both in the 
diet and in public affairs. 

But, being young and ambitious, 
he at length determined to repair to 
the trans-atlantic continent, for the 
express purpose of aiding and sup- 
porting the American cause. As 
for himself, he already appertained 
to the party that opposed the en- 
croachments of Russia, and lan- 
guished for the independence of 



GENERAL KOSCIUSKO. 215 

their native country ; and, in addi- 
tion to feelings of this kind, there 
is something fascinating in the very 
sound of liberty to a young, ardent, 
and ingenuous mind. On this oc- 
casion, Kosciusko prevailed on a 
lady of noble birth and distinguished 
family, to unite her fate to his, and 
to accompany him to the New 
World : but these romantic lovers 
were pursued, overtaken, and sepa- 
rated for many long years, by the 
interposition of paternal authority ; 
for it was then a species of treason 
in that country for one of the poor 
nobles to aspire to the hand of a 
daughter of a great and a powerful 
magnat. At this period, too, the 
bulk of the Polish nation actually 
consisted of vassals, literally ad- 
scribti glebce ; and, as in Russia, 



216 LIFE OF 

at the absolute disposal of the 
aristocracy. 

After a variety of adventures, 
Captain Kosciusko at length landed 
in America, and instantly repaired 
to the head-quarters of General 
Washington, by whom he was 
handsomely received. He had ar- 
rived, indeed, at a fortunate moment ; 
for hostilities had but recently com- 
menced, and the defenders of liberty, 
although numerous, active, and re- 
solute, were at the same time raw, 
ignorant, undisciplined, and unac- 
quainted with every thing that ap- 
pertains to the art of war. To such 
an army, — if army it could then be 
called, — this young and spirited 
Pole then became a treasure. He 
was present at many engagements 
during the war, in all of which he 



GENERAL KOSCIUSKO. 217 

conducted himself with great gal- 
lantry ; and was admitted into the 
family of General Washington, as 
an officer appertaining to his suite. 
It is gratifying to remark the 
association of these great men of 
kindred minds in a common cause ; 
the one, afterwards establishing the 
triumph of liberal principles, for 
which he contended, the other a like 
asserter of his country's freedom, 
treading in the footsteps of his patron 
and friend. The circumstance re- 
flects much credit on the discern- 
ment of Washington, and is pecu- 
liarly interesting, from the subse- 
quent celebrity which the gallant 
Kosciusko attained. It was while 
enjoying the confidence of our great 
commander, that Colonel Kosciusko 
acquired the friendship of the cele- 



218 LIFE OF 

brated Marquis de Lafayette ; he 
was much esteemed by the Count 
de Rochambeau, who afterwards 
became a marshal of France ; and, 
in short, he appears, by his skill, 
his bravery, and his amiable man- 
ners, to have conciliated the regard, 
not only of the American officers, 
but also of the numerous body of 
French, and other foreigners, then 
in their service. 

At length, when peace arrived, 
he determined to return to Europe. 
Having landed in France, he imme- 
diately proceeded to Poland, where 
his love and patriotism were both 
excited by some obscure rumours 
that had recently reached his ears. 
On his arrival at Warsaw, it was 
reported to him that his intended 
bride was married, and he found 



GENERAL KOSCIUSKO. 219 



the Poles longing for an opportunity 
to shake off the yoke of Russia, 
and to rid themselves of grievances 
experienced since the first partition 
of Poland. 

He now betook himself to a se- 
cluded and retired life, partly to in- 
dulge his melancholy, and partly to 
avoid suspicion; for the generals 
of the Empress Catherine were be- 
come jealous of all popular charac- 
ters, and the fame of Kosciusko had 
aleady reverberated from the shores 
of the Atlantic, and began to be 
pronounced with rapture by a nation 
which panted for a liberator ! 

At length an opportunity of ad- 
vancement presented itself, and he 
instantly left his retreat. A new 
diet, actuated by a spirit of national 
independence, was anxious to lessen 



220 LIFE OF 



the influence of foreigners in Po- 
land ; and, to effect this, wished to 
encourage such of the natives as 
displayed a love of country united 
with a knowledge of the art of war. 
As no Pole was more prominent in 
respect to both qualifications, Kos- 
ciusko was now promoted to the 
rank of major-general. 

But this very assembly, over- 
awed by the presence of foreign 
troops, and menaced by a Russian 
envoy, was obliged, reluctantly and 
indignantly, to ratify the bondage of 
their country by a second partition 
of Poland. The pretext for this, — 
and when is arbitrary power defi- 
cient in pretext ? — was the new con- 
stitution of 1791, by which the 
vassalage of the peasants was to 
be mitigated. In the year 1794, 



GENERAL KOSCIUSKO. 221 

Baron d'Ingelstrohm, acting with 
the authority of a master, demand- 
ed the restoration of the servile 
code of 1772, and actually ordered 
every vestige of that of 1791 to be 
erased from the records of the se- 
nate. Humiliating compliance only 
increased the extent of Russian in- 
terference, and the empress now 
required that the national army 
should be reduced to 16,000 men, a 
body insufficient to maintain the in- 
dependence of Poland proper, under 
her new limits. This imperious 
demand produced a new civil war 
in Poland, the event of which was 
for some time uncertain. 

Meanwhile, Kosciusko had al- 
ready taken the field in support of 
the new constitution ; for he served 
as general of division under Count 



222 LIFE OF 

Poniatovvski. During a whole cam- 
paign, he distinguished himself, as 
usual, by an union of courage and 
good conduct. The king, who had 
been placed on the throne for the 
express purpose of serving the in- 
terests of Russia, was an accom- 
plished scholar, but weak, vacilla- 
ting, and fickle. The menaces of the 
court of St. Petersburgh prevailed ; 
and, instead of taking the field in 
person, and placing himself at the 
head of his countrymen, he soon 
proved himself unworthy of that 
crown which was beset by the le- 
gions and intrigues of Russia. On 
learning the fatal intelligence of 
this servile compliance, General 
Kosciusko resigned his commission, 
and retired to Germany. 

But new events speedily fixed his 



GENERAL KOSCIUSKO. 223 



attention once more on his native 
country, now likely to become a 
theatre of war and bloodshed, of 
ruin and desolation. The politicians 
of Europe waited for the effects 
likely to be produced by the new 
and insolent order for disbanding 
the troops ; and it was generally 
supposed that the Poles would be 
once more obliged to submit. But 
they were mistaken, for Madalinski 
refused to obey an illegal command ; 
on the contrary, hastily summoning 
all the troops within the extent of 
his jurisdiction, he passed the Vis- 
tula, and attacked a body of Prus- 
sians : for the conquest was tripar- 
tite, and the courts of Vienna and 
Berlin were nearly as active in re- 
spect to the partition, although not 
quite so ferocious as the Russians. 



224 LIFE OF 



No sooner had the news of this 
insurrection been communicated to 
Kosciusko, who still kept up a con- 
stant intercourse with the insurgents, 
than he suddenly quitted his retreat 
at Leipsic, where he had taken re- 
fuge, and advanced rapidly, with 
several officers in his suite, to the 
frontiers. Having there learned 
the precise state of affairs, he in- 
stantly entered Poland, and soon 
received a deputation from a body of 
respectable Poles, who had secretly 
assembled at Warsaw, and chosen 
him generalissimo. Accompanied 
by a chosen band, in 1794 he made 
a sudden irruption into the palati- 
nate of Cracovia, in which but few 
of the enemy had as yet appea??d ; 
and, entering the capital at the pre- 
cise moment when a feeble garrison 



GENERAL KOSCIUSKO. 225 

had been driven but, he instantly 
replaced it in its former station, and 
obliged the victors, in their turn, to 
betake themselves to flight. 

He now published a formula, 
which was constantly designated in 
Poland, by the term of an " An act 
of Insurrection ;" and, having fallen 
in with Madalinski, Who had been 
obliged to fly before a superior corps 
of Russians, they immediately turn- 
ed on the pursuers ; and, with a 
body of light and undisciplined 
troops, actually conquered a supe- 
rior number of veterans : but the 
latter only fought for pay and booty ; 
the former were actuated by far 
different motives — patriotism, in- 
dignation, and revenge! 

Meanwhile the Warsovians, ac- 
tuated by similar principles, and 



15 



226 LIFE OF 

inflamed still more by the presence, 
the rapacity, the cruelty, and the 
injustice of a foreign force, de- 
termined on joining in the insurrec- 
tion. No sooner did intelligence of 
this disposition arrive in the Polish 
camp, by means of numerous emis- 
saries whom the love of country 
had attached to the common cause, 
than Kosciusko determined to repair 
thither. He accordingly set out at 
the head of a motley assemblage, 
incompletely armed, and but badly 
disciplined, with the view of giving 
battle to the finest troops in Europe, 
all of whom were provided with 
muskets and bayonets ; while most 
had seen service, either in the wars 
of Poland or of Turkey ; and, in 
addition to a regular supply of 
ammunition and provisions, they 



GENERAL KOSCIUSKO. 227 

possessed a formidable train of ar- 
tillery. 

While in full march towards the 
capital, this raw and inexperienced 
body of recruits fell in with a large 
detachment of Russians ; but Kos- 
ciusko was at their head, and, dis- 
daining the thought of retreat, they 
commenced an action, making the 
onset with such dreadful impetu- 
osity, that the invaders, unable to 
withstand the shock, broke and fled 
in all directions. On learning the 
happy news, the citizens of Warsaw, 
faithful to their vows, instantly flew 
to arms ; and the Russian garrison, 
endangered by this defeat of their 
countrymen, were under the neces- 
sity of retreating. 

The gallant Pole, on entering 
Warsaw, found King Stat;' 'ms 



228 LIFE OF 



Augustus, who had been abandoned 
by his allies, in a state of despon- 
dency. Instead of triumphing on 
a feeble and fallen monarch, he 
raised him from the dust, and 
ordered that his majesty should be 
treated with all the deference due to 
his exalted rank. The policy of 
this conduct is perhaps less worthy 
of commendation than its heroism. 
His duplicity, timidity, and irreso- 
lution, had rendered this prince net 
only despised but hated by his sub- 
jects. He readily declared himself, 
indeed, at the head of the confedera- 
tion, and, for a time, sanctioned the 
insurrection by the thin and trans- 
parent veil of legitimacy, which he 
threw over the ranks of his embat- 
tled countrymen. On this, as on 
all other occasions, his majesty was 



GENERAL KOSCIUSKO. 229 

entirely passive ; for, adopting a 
cunning, but odious neutrality, he 
prepared, as usual, to abandon the 
vanquished, and declare himself on 
the side of the victor. An oppor- 
tunity but too soon presented itself! 

Kosciusko now beheld multitudes 
joining his standard ; he calculated 
on an army of 70,000 men, and 
he was in hopes to be able to excite 
a universal insurrection among the 
whole body of peasants. 

In this situation of affairs, the 
general has been loudly censured 
for not summoning a national diet, 
declaring bondage at an end, and 
converting all Poland into one great 
camp, in which every one of an 
age capable of bearing arms should 
assemble. But unhappily, many 
of the nobles of his own party 



230 LIFE OF 

possessed multitudes of slaves, whom 
they considered as no less their 
property than their horses, their 
hawks, and their dogs ; and such 
is the effect of vassalage, that, rather 
than give liberty to their bondsmen, 
they themselves were willing to bow 
the neck beneath the iron yoke of 
Russia. 

Meanwhile, Prussia, which had 
hitherto temporized, began to act 
with decision and effect. While 
one body of the troops of that na- 
tion seized on Cracovia, another 
marched against Warsaw; and it 
was expected that a sanguinary 
combat would take place between 
Kosciusko and Frederick William. 
j But Kosciusko now, for the first 
j time, acted on the defensive ; and 
j the Prussian army was doomed to 



GENERAL KOSCIUSKO. 231 



be overcome by raw troops, and a 
general unknown in the annals of 
European warfare. This accord- 
ingly took place ; for after a long 
and hopeless siege, the assailants 
were obliged to retreat : happy at 
being able to reach the frontiers of 
Silesia. 

But Suwarrow now advanced 
at the head of a body of veterans, 
breathing revenge and denouncing 
slaughter. To prevent a meditated 
junction with the troops under Ge- 
neral Fersen, Kosciusko attacked 
the latter, who were far superior to 
him, both in skill and numbers. 
A bloody and decisive engagement 
now ensued, and, after a conflict of 
five hours, the Poles at length gave 
way. Kosciusko, after a variety of 
charges, and risking his life a 



232 LIFE OF 

thousand times, received a deep and 
dangerous wound ; and, being both 
unable and unwilling to leave the 
field, he at length found himself 
surrounded and a prisoner. Such 
was the change of circumstances, 
that the victor of yesterday was 
obliged to submit to those he had 
so recently vanquished, and that 
too, with such fearful odds against 
him. 

Meanwhile, the Generals Su- 
warrow and Fersen, having effected 
the meditated junction and Koscius- 
ko being now strictly guarded and 
confined, all Poland from this mo- 
ment appertained to the victors. 
A ferocious general immediately 
marched against Warsaw, which 
was garrisoned by a body of gal- 
lant Poles, the only remaining hope 



GENERAL KOSCIUSKO. 233 

and consolation of their unhappy- 
country. But it was fated that the 
army which had sacked Ismailoff, 
and destroyed its garrison of 20,000 
men, should repeat the same scene in 
the capital of Poland. The Russians 
marched to the assault, and made 
themselves masters of the works. 
The Polish chiefs, Kosciusko, 
Polocki, &c, were sent under a 
strong military escort to Petersburgh, 
and thrown into dungeons ; and the 
unhappy monarch himself was or- 
dered to repair, first to Grodno 
and then to Petersburgh, where he 
soon ended his days, without ex- 
citing, after the high hopes, on very 
slender grounds, conceived of him 
in the commencement of his reign, 
the slightest emotion of either esteem 
or regret. 



234 LIFE OF 



A third and final partition of the 
unfortunate kingdom of Poland, 
after a short interval, took place, 
conformably to a new convention, 
(signed atPetersburgh, October 24th 
1795,) between the crown of Rus- 
sia and Prussia, to which Austria 
afterwards acceded ; and the very 
name of Poland was, from this time, 
blotted out from the map of Eu- 
rope. Such were the exploits per- 
formed on the eastern side of 
Christendom, by the high and very 
dear allies of England, jointly en- 
gaged with her in a confederacy, 
which had for its professed object 
the restoration of religion and 
social order, and regular govern- 
ment — exploits which infinitely ex- 
ceeded, in atrocity and barbarity, 
any crimes which, surrounded as 



GENERAL KOSCIUSKO. 235 



she was with enemies, and irritated 
by every species of provocation, 
had been, in the very crisis of her 
revolution, perpetrated by the athe- 
ists and anarchists of France. 

In the meantime, Kosciusko was 
confined in the dungeon of a fort in 
the vicinity of the capital of Rus- 
sia, by Catherine II., who, by a 
judicious distribution of a few pen- 
sions and medals among the literati 
of Europe, had contrived to obtain 
a high reputation for clemency at a 
cheap rate. The death of that 
princess, whose real character has 
never been sufficiently developed, 
at length freed this noble Pole from 
his fetters ; and the magnanimity of 
her son, which has never been duly 
appreciated, conferred on him his 
liberty, to which he generously ad- 



236 LIFE OF 

ded an income, sufficient to supply 
all his wants. Nay, the new em- 
peror did more ; he visited his illus- 
trious prisoner, and was himself 
the harbinger of his own generous 
intentions. 

But Kosciusco had no longer any 
country in Europe; he therefore 
resolved to repair to his adopted 
one in America. Having taken a 
passage from St. Petersburgh to 
London, on his arrival in the capi- 
tal of England, the house where he 
resided was completely surrounded 
by an admiring multitude ; and per- 
sons of rank, of all parties and de- 
scriptions, were eager to pay their 
respects to the hero. The whig 
club voted him a sword, and sent a 
deputation to announce the intelli- 
gence. 



GENERAL KOSCIUSKO. 237 

His reception in America was of 
the most brilliant kind ; for, on his 
arrival there, he was joyfully re- 
ceived both by the government and 
the people* But the state of his 
wounds, and indeed his declining 
health, prohibited a long sojourn in 
the trans-atlantic continent. The 
situation of Europe* too, was such 
as to afford hopes of better times 
for his unfortunate country. 

After a short stay, during which 
he obtained possession of the grants 
of land formerly assigned to him 
by Congress for his services in the 
revolutionary war, Kosciusko re- 
embarked, and landed in France,— 
which he had left a monarchy, and 
now found a republic ! He was re- 
ceived with every possible attention 
by the directory; and as the cli- 



238 LIFE OF 

mate agreed with him, he soon after 
settled in that country. But, Rus- 
sia, having declared war against 
France, by a rare instance of mag- 
nanimity, he resigned the pension 
of the emperor, and lived long 
enough to see the autocrat crouch 
under the sword of Bonaparte. He 
also beheld his enemy Suwarrow 
die in disgrace, amidst the scorn and 
indignation of mankind, — who by 
this time, had forgotten his exploits, 
and only remembered his enormi- 
ties. 

When Bonaparte became first 
consul, and then sovereign, it was 
hoped he would extend a protecting 
hand to Poland ; but this was not 
the case, and no mention of that 
unhappy country is made in the 
treaty of Amiens, although the in- 



GENERAL KOSCIUSKO. 239 

terests of the Ottoman Porte are 
strictly guarded and provided for by 
an express article. 

At length, on the renewal of the 
continental war, it was expected that 
Bonaparte would have achieved the 
liberation of Poland ; and, had he 
been in earnest on this subject, he 
might have obtained far more real 
glory than he had hitherto enjoyed. 
His grand project for the invasion 
of Russia ; his bold scheme, which 
led him to encounter all the horrors 
of a polar winter ; his energetic but 
useless march to Moscow ; — would 
have been then unnecessary. In 
this case, his army would have re- 
mained entire ; his reputation would 
have been enhanced ; the tranquillity 
of Europe would have been strength- 
ened by recreating a new and inde- 



240 LIFE OF 

pendent kingdom; and the crown 
of France would have been firmly 
fixed on his head ; while the sceptre 
of Charlemagne must have been 
transferred to a son who* in his own 
person, united the blood of Napo- 
leon and St. Louis, to that of Maria 
Theresa. 

In 1806, when the Emperor of 
France deemed it necessary, for his 
defence, to occupy Poland, he invi- 
ted Kosciusko to join him at Berlin : 
but, as his health would not permit 
him to remove from the vicinity of 
the French capital, he declined to 
repair thither. However, his name 
and credit were invoked upon this 
occasion, as will appear from the 
following state paper. 



GENERAL KOSCIUSKO. 241 

GENERAL KOSCIUSKO'S ADDRESS TO 
HIS COUNTRYMEN. 

Amidst the clangour of arms, 
which re-echoes from Poland, Kos- 
sciusko is about to join you. In 
the enterprise of the French, in their 
triumphs, and by their awful eagle 
hovering before them, you will dis- 
tinguish those legions which display 
their courage in the four quarters of 
the globe, while in one campaign 
they have dispersed the united force 
of two great empires; and have 
lately in one week annihilated the 
labours of a century, the work of 
Frederick, and the trophies of his 
old and celebrated generals. 

Dear countrymen and friends, who 
have proved yourselves to possess 
a degree of fortitude equal to our 



16 



242 LIFE OF 

misfortunes ; you, who banished 
from your native soil, have remain- 
ed under a nation friendly to Po- 
land; and who, having become 
strangers in the heart of that coun- 
try, nevertheless preserved the sense 
of glory, and the recollection of 
our brethren, — arise ! the great na- 
tion is before you : Napoleon ex- 
pects, and Kosciusko calls you ! 

I soon shall again behold the pa- 
ternal earth which my arm defend- 
ed ; those fields which I have bathed 
with my blood ; and with tears of 
joy I embrace the unfortunate friends 
whom I was not permitted to follow 
to the grave. 

Beloved and brave countrymen, 
whom I was compelled to abandon 
to the yoke of the conquerors, I 
have only lived to avenge your 



GENERAL KOSCIUSKO. 243 

wrongs ; and I now return to restore 
you to freedom. Sacred remains 
of my country ! I hail you with 
transport, and embrace you with a 
sacred mania. I will join you, 
never more to part. Worthy of 
the great man whose arm is ex- 
tended towards you, worthy of the 
Poles who now hear my voice, I 
shall endeavour to establish a more 
splendid and stable basis ; or, if the 
name of my native country amount 
to no more with my fellow-citizens 
than so many empty words, in this 
case I shall know how to avoid my 
own disaster and your disgrace, by 
burying myself under the noble 
ruins of our aspiring fortune. But, 
no ; the good times of Poland have 
returned. ' Destiny has not led 
Napoleon and his invincibles to the 



244 LIFE OF 



shores of the Vistula without an 
object. We are under the segis of 
the monarch who vanquished diffi- 
culties as it were by a miracle ; and 
the re-animation of Poland is too 
glorious a subject not to have been 
left by the Eternal Judge for him 
to achieve. Kosciusko. 

Paris, Nov. 1, 1806. 

But Bonaparte was content, on 
this memorable occasion, with ex- 
pelling the Russians, and occupying 
their portion of Poland with his 
troops: this measure had become 
absolutely necessary for his ultimate 
designs, for he now converted it into 
a place of arms ; and it afterwards 
became a place of retreat, when for- 
saken by fortune, and abandoned by 
his allies, he here sought refuge, with 



GENERAL KOSCIUSKO. 245 

the remnant of an army, from the 
flames of Moscow, and the ven- 
geance of the Cossacks. His treaties 
and connexions with the court of 
Vienna precluded the possibility of 
becoming the restorer of Poland; 
for he had yielded to the vulgar 
ambition of having an emperor for 
a father-in-law, and did not find, 
until too late, that the house of 
Austria was wholly regardless of 
such ties, which were, indeed, con- 
sidered as a humiliation ; — security 
and aggrandizement alone have ever 
been the leading features of the 
policy of that family. 

The events that succeeded are 
too well known to all Europe and 
America to be enumerated here; 
certain it is, that after the fall of 
Kosciusko, the Poles despaired of 



246 LIFE OF 



their freedom, and their unhappy 
country, finally united to Russia, 
was governed by an archduke, the 
brother of the emperor. 

Meantime, the gallant and un- 
fortunate Pole, steadfast to his pur- 
pose, remained amid the happy 
solitude of a country life, and never 
more revisited his beloved country. 
Such was the veneration paid to 
his character, however, that when 
the allies entered France, his little 
habitation remained sacred and in- 
violable ; even the Russians had 
been now taught to respect so gal- 
lant and so noble an enemy. 

The Emperor Alexander, like 
his father Paul, seemed anxious to 
salute the Pole ; he commiserated 
his misfortunes, he admired his in- 
trepidity, and he could not but 



GENERAL KOSCIUSKO. 247 



respect his patriotism ; he even ex- 
pressed a wish to restore him to his 
former rank and consequence in 
the country that had given him birth, 
but, with a consistency worthy of 
his character, he is said to have 
sternly rejected the proffered boon. 
"If your majesty means by Po- 
land," continued he, " that Poland, 
such as it was in 1794, I am both 
ready and willing to return to my 
native land ; but I cannot condescend 
to serve under a foreign prince who 
wears its crown. Therefore, un- 
less Poland be governed by a native 
sovereign, or a republican form of 
government is established there, I 
must decline your majesty's most 
gracious offer." The emperor is re- 
ported to have replied, with his usual 
policy and circumspection, "All 



248 LIFE OF 

you have uttered, general, is praise- 
worthy, and merits my esteem; 
but I can say nothing at present 
about the government of Poland, 
for all these matters are to be finally 
discussed and settled at a congress 
about to be held at Vienna.'' 

The private life of Kosciusko 
was to the full as romantic as the 
public one. With the high-born 
dame, alluded to in a former part 
of this narrative, he was afterwards 
united, and became her third hus- 
band. By this lady he had a 
daughter, who is since married, 
and resides in Poland ; so that he 
may have grand-children to glory 
in his name ; and, if occasion should 
offer, to vindicate his honour and 
his cause. 

When forsaken, and nearly for- 



GENERAL KOSCIUSKO. 249 

gotten by all the world, one faithful 
friend still remained to the gallant 
Pole. This was M. Ziltner, with 
whom he resided during the last 
few years of his life, in the vicinity 
of Fontainbleau. This gentleman 
had been formerly minister from 
the Swiss cantons to the court of 
the Tuileries, and his friend, in 
return, contrived that the imperial 
bounty of which he himself dis- 
dained to partake, should insure 
independence to the old age of his 
kind and beneficent host. 

During the autumn of 1817, they 
took a long journey together, for 
the purpose of visiting Switzerland, 
and paying homage to the cradle of 
so many patriots and heroes. It 
was at Soleure that Kosciusko re- 
signed his breath, in the sixty-fifth 



250 LIFE OF 

year of his age, happy to escape 
from a land of tyranny and priest- 
craft, and to draw his last sigh 
within sight of the canton that gave 
birth to William Tell, the liberator 
of Switzerland. 

The brave, disinterested, and 
virtuous Kosciusko is now no more. 
He is gone where the voice of flat- 
tery cannot reach, followed by the 
praises of the good in every clime 
where liberty is prized or under- 
stood. He loved America, fought 
and bled in her defence. In all his 
intercourse with the citizens of this 
country he evinced the utmost de- 
sire to serve their cause and pro- 
I mote their interests. In his days 
of power, at the head of armies 
that adored his name, no false glory 
dazzled him, nor corrupt ambition 



GENERAL KOSCIUSKO. 251 

could betray him. He nobly re- 
sisted the foreign potentates who 
had laid waste his country, not be- 
cause they were kings and emperors, 
but because they were invaders and 
oppressors. He combated with no 
rebellious sword — for no ambiguous 
object. When Poland lost her inde- 
pendence, Kosciusko lost his home : 
as she sunk he rose ; but not upon 
her ruins. The court of Russia 
would have allured this illustrious 
defender of the people whom she 
had subjugated, by temptations irre- 
sistible to vulgar minds ; Bonaparte 
would have made him the flattered 
instrument o'f a spurious and hollow 
liberty to his countrymen ; but Kos- 
ciusko saw that their lot was irre- 
trievable, and his own he refused to 
change. As a soldier and a patriot, 



252 LIFE OF 

in public life and in retirement, his 
principles were untainted, and his 
name unsullied; the monarchs whom 
he opposed, respected him ; the fac- 
tions who failed to seduce, forbore 
to slander him ; and he would have 
been a Washington, had he not been 
a Wallace. 

Unnoticed shall the mighty fall ? 
Unwept and unlamented die ? — 
Shall he, whom bonds cannot enthral, 
Who planned, who fought, who bled for 

all, 
Unconsecrated lie ? 
Without a song, whose fervid strains 
Might kindle fire in patriotic veins ! — 
No ! — thus it ne'er shall be : and fame 
Ordains to thee a brighter lot ; 
While earth — while hope endures, thy 

name, 
Pure — high — unchangeable — the same- 
Shall never be forgot ; 
'Tis shrined amid the holy throng ; 
'Tis woven in immortal song ! — 



GENERAL KOSCIUSKO. 253 

Yes ! — Campbell of the deathless lay, 
The ardent poet of the free, 
Has painted Warsaw's latest day, 
In colours that resist decay, 
In accents worthy Thee ; 
Thy hosts on battle-field arrayed, 
And in thy grasp the patriot blade ! 

Oh ! sainted is the name of him, 
And sacred should his relics be, 
Whose course no selfish aim bedim : 
Who, spotless as the seraphim, 
Exerts his energy, 

To make the earth by freedom trod, 
And see mankind the sons of God ! 

And thou wert one of these; 'twas thine, 
Through thy devoted country's night, 
The latest of a freeborn line, 
With all that purity to shine, 
Which makes a hero bright ; 
With all that lustre to appear, 
Which freemen love, and tyrants fear. 

A myrtle wreath was on thy blade, 
Which broke before its cause was won !— 
Thou, to no sordid fears betrayed, 
Mid desolation undismayed, 
Wert mighty, though undone ; 
No terrors gloomed thy closing scene, 
In danger and in death serene ! 



254 LIFE OF 



Though thou hast bade our world fare- 
well, 
And left the blotted land beneath, 
In purer, happier realms to dwell ; 
With Wallace, Washington, and Tell, 
Thou sharest the laurel wreath — 
The Brutus of degenerate climes ! 
A beacon-light to other times ! 

In no country is the character of 
Kosciusko held in higher estima- 
tion, than in the United States. 
His eminent services in the revolu- 
tionary war are remembered with 
fervent gratitude, and his elevation 
and firmness of spirit as a champion 
of national independence and free- 
dom, are duly appreciated by the 
American people. At West Point 
a monument is erected to his me- 
mory, on which his services and 
merits are recorded ; and in the 
annals of our country the name of 



GENERAL KOSCIUSKO. 255 

Kosciusko will always remain 
among the most able, disinterested, 
and valiant of its defenders. 

In his native country, Poland, 
Kosciusko's memory is held in the 
deepest reverence. There an im- 
mense monument is erected to com- 
memorate his services, and he is 
universally regarded as the Wash- 
ington of Poland. Their Sobieskis, 
and Poniatowskys, are all regarded 
as inferior in glory to the great 
Kosciusko. 



THE END. 



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